THE 
 
 INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BY REFERRING HIE ANOMALIES IN 
 
 THE LITERARY CHARACTER 
 
 TO THE 
 
 HABITS AND CONSTITUTIONAL PECULIARITIES 
 
 OF 
 
 MEN OF GENIUS. 
 
 BY 
 
 R. R. MADDEN, ESQ. 
 
 AUTHOR OF " TRAVELS IN TURKLY," &C, 
 
 Qni ratione corporis non habent, sed cogunt mortalem immortal!, terrestrem 
 <t therae equalem prestare industriam. 
 
 PLUTARCH, DE SANIT. TUENU. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET. 
 1833.
 
 <x 
 
 cfc 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STKEtT, SIUAND.
 
 TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 THE EARL OF CHARLEVILLE, 
 
 WHOSE TASTE FOR LITERATURE 
 
 AND 
 
 ACQUAINTANCE WITH ALL SUBJECTS 
 
 CONNECTED WITH THE HISTOBT Of 
 
 THE VOTARIES AND VICTIMS OF LITERARY PURSUITS, 
 
 TIME HAS NOT IMPAIRED, 
 NOR PLEASURE INTERRUPTED, 
 
 THIS ATTEMPT 
 
 TO ILLUSTRATE 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF MEN OF GENIUS, 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 BY HIS LORDSHIP'S 
 MOST RESPECTFUL AND GRATEFUL SERVANT, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 May, 1835.
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 62, line 6, for Dupuytren read Larrey. 
 
 166, 3, for have or know, read have known.
 
 THE 
 
 INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF LITERARY HABITS. 
 
 IT is generally admitted that literary men are 
 an irritable race, subject to many infirmities, 
 both of mind and body ; that worldly prospe- 
 rity and domestic happiness are not very often 
 the result of their pursuits. 
 
 Eccentricity is the " badge of all their tribe ;" 
 and so many errors accompany their career, that 
 
 VOL. i. B
 
 2 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 fame and frailty would almost seem to be inse- 
 parable companions. Perhaps it is wisely or- 
 dained that such should be the case, to check 
 the pride of human intellect, and to render 
 those of humbler capacities contented with their 
 lot, to whom nature has denied the noblest of 
 her gifts. 
 
 It is the unfortunate tendency of literary 
 habits, to enamour the studious of the seclusion 
 of the closet, and to render them more conver- 
 sant with the philosophy and erudition of bye- 
 gone times, than with the sentiments and feel- 
 ings of their fellow-men. Their knowledge of 
 the world is, in a great measure, derived from 
 books, not from an acquaintance with its active 
 duties ; and the consequence is, that when they 
 venture into its busy haunts, they bring with 
 them a spirit of uncompromising independence, 
 which arrays itself at once against every preju-
 
 LITERARY HABITS. > 
 
 dice they have to encounter : such a spirit is but 
 ill calculated to disarm the hostility of any casual 
 opponent, or in the circle where it is exhibited " to 
 buy golden opinions " of any " sorts of people." 
 If the felicitous example of the poet of the draw- 
 ing room seduce them into the haunts of fashion- 
 able life, they find themselves still less in their 
 element ; the effort to support the dignity of 
 genius in a common-place conversation, costs 
 them, perhaps, more fatigue than the composi- 
 tion of half a volume would occasion in their 
 study. Or if any congenial topic engage atten- 
 tion, they may have the good sense to subdue 
 their ardour, and endeavour to assume an awk- 
 ward air of fashionable nonchalance ; they 
 may attempt to be agreeable, they may seem to 
 be at ease, but they are on the stilts of literary 
 abstraction all the time, and they cannot bow 
 them down to kiss the crimson robe of good 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 society with graceful homage. But these are 
 the minor inconveniences that arise from long 
 indulgence in literary habits ; the graver ones 
 are those that arise from impaired health and 
 depressed spirits, the inevitable consequences of 
 excessive mental application. Waywardness of 
 temper, testiness of humour and capriciousness 
 of conduct, result from this depression ; and 
 under such circumstances the errors of genius 
 are estimated too often by their immediate con- 
 sequences, without any reference to predisposing 
 causes. The fact is, the carriage of genius is 
 unlikely to conciliate strangers, while its foibles 
 are calculated to weary even friends, and its 
 very glory to make bitter rivals of its contem- 
 poraries and comrades. 
 
 Accordingly we find that its ashes are hardly 
 cold, before its frailties are raked up from the 
 tomb, and baited at the ring of biography, till
 
 LITERARY HABITS. 5 
 
 the public taste is satiated with the sport. It 
 is only when its competitors are gathered to 
 their fathers, and the ephemeral details of 
 trivial feuds, of petty foibles, and private 
 scandal, are buried with their authors, that the 
 conduct of genius begins to be understood, and 
 its character to be fairly represented. 
 
 The luminary itself at last engages that atten- 
 tion which had previously been occupied with 
 the specks upon its disc. It was nearly a 
 quarter of a century before " the malignant 
 principles of Milton" gave the world sufficient 
 time to ascertain there was such a poem in ex- 
 istence as Paradise Lost. Only three thousand 
 copies of it were sold in eleven years, while 
 eight thousand copies of a modern novel have 
 been disposed of in as many days ; but we need 
 not go back to the age of Milton for evidence 
 of the tardy justice that is done to genius. Ten
 
 6 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 years ago the indiscretions of Shelley had ren- 
 dered his name an unmentionable one to ears 
 polite ; but there is a reaction in public opinion, 
 and whatever were his follies, his virtues are 
 beginning to be known, and his poetry to be 
 justly appreciated. It unfortunately happens 
 that those who are disqualified by the limits of 
 their capacities for the highe*- walks of learning, 
 are those who take upon them the arduous 
 duties of the literary Rhadamanthus, and at 
 whose hands the " masters of the world " 
 generally receive the roughest treatment. The 
 competency of such a tribunal, however, must 
 not be questioned, even when a Byron is at its 
 bar : genius has not the privilege of being judged 
 by its peers, for the difficulty would be too 
 great of impannelling a jury of its fellows. 
 
 But how few of those who fasten on the in- 
 firmities of great talent, for the purpose of
 
 LITERARY HABITS. 7 
 
 gnawing away its fame, like those northern 
 insects that prey 
 
 " On the brains of the elk till his very last sigh ;" 
 
 how very few who track the errors of genius to 
 the tomb, take into consideration, or are capa- 
 ble of estimating the influence on the physical 
 and moral constitution of studious habits inor- 
 dinately pursued, of mental exertion long con- 
 tinued, of bodily exercise perhaps wholly neg- 
 lected ! How little do they know of the morbid 
 sensibility of genius, who mistake its gloom for 
 dreary misanthropy ; or the distempered 
 visions of " a heat oppressed brain,'* for imper- 
 sonated opinions; or the shadows of a sickly 
 dream, for the real sentiments of the heart ! 
 How few of the fatal friends who violate the 
 sanctity of private life to minister to the pre- 
 vailing appetite for literary gossip, ever think of
 
 8 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 referring the imperfections they drag into 
 public notice, (yet fail not to deplore,) to a 
 temperament deranged by ill-regulated, or ex- 
 cessive mental application, or of attributing 
 " the variable weather of the mind, which 
 clouds without obscuring the reason" of the 
 individual, to the influence of those habits which 
 are so unfavorable to health ! Suicide might, 
 indeed, have well had its horrors for that bard, 
 who was even a more sensitive man than " the 
 melancholy Cowley," when he was informed that 
 one of his best-natured friends was only waiting 
 for the opportunity to write his life. But how 
 devoutly might he have wished that " nature's 
 copy in him had been eterne," had he known 
 how many claims were shortly to be preferred 
 to the property of his memory, and how many 
 of those who had crawled into his confidence 
 were to immortalize his errors, and to make his
 
 LITERARY HABITS. 9 
 
 imperfections so many pegs for disquisitions on 
 perverted talents. 
 
 Of all persons who sacrifice their peace for 
 the attainment of notoriety, literary men are 
 most frequently made the subject of biography; 
 but of all are they least fitted for that sort of 
 microscopic biography which consists in the ex- 
 hibition of the minute details of life. The 
 Pythoness, we are told, was but a pitiable object 
 when removed from the inspiration of the tri- 
 pod, and the man of genius is, perhaps, no less 
 divested of the attributes of his greatness when 
 he is taken from his study, or followed in 
 crowded circles. We naturally desire to know 
 every thing that concerns the character or the 
 general conduct of those whose productions have 
 entertained or instructed us, and we gratify a 
 laudable curiosity when we inquire into their 
 history, and seek to illustrate their writings by 
 
 u5
 
 10 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 the general tenor of their lives and actions. 
 But when biography is made the vehicle, not 
 only of private scandal, but of that minor ma- 
 lignity of truth, which holds, as it were, a 
 magnifying mirror to every naked imperfection 
 of humanity, which possibly had never been 
 discovered had no friendship been violated, no 
 confidence been abused, and no errors exagger- 
 ated by the medium through which they have 
 been viewed, it ceases to be a legitimate inquiry 
 into private character, or public conduct, and 
 no infamy is comparable to that of magnifying 
 the faults, or libelling the fame of the illustrious 
 dead. 
 
 " Consider," says a learned German, " under 
 how many categories, down to the most imper- 
 tinent, the world inquires concerning great men, 
 and never wearies striving to represent to itself 
 their whole structure, aspect, procedure outward
 
 LITERARY HABITS. 11 
 
 and inward. Blame not the world for such 
 curiosity about its great ones ; this comes of the 
 world's old-established necessity to worship. 
 Blame it not, pity it rather with a certain lov- 
 ing respect. Nevertheless, the last stage of 
 human perversion, it has been said, is, when 
 sympathy corrupts itself into envy, and the 
 indestructible interest we take in men's doings 
 has become a joy over their faults and misfor- 
 tunes ; this is the last and lowest stage lower 
 than this we cannot go." 
 
 In a word, that species of biography which 
 is written for contemporaries, and not for pos- 
 terity, is worse than worthless. It would be 
 well for the memory of many recent authors, if 
 their injudicious friends had made a simple 
 obituary serve the purpose of a history. 
 
 It is rarely the lot of the wayward child of 
 genius to have a Currie for his historian, and
 
 12 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 hence is it that frailties, which might have 
 awakened sympathy, are now only mooted, to 
 be remembered with abhorrence. It is greatly 
 to be regretted that eminent medical men are 
 not often to be met with qualified, like Dr. 
 Currie, by literary attainments, as well as pro- 
 fessional ability, for undertakings of this kind. 
 No class of men have the means of obtaining so 
 intimate a knowledge of human nature, so fami- 
 liar an acquaintance with the unmasked mind. 
 The secret thoughts of the invalid are as ob- 
 vious as the symptoms of his disease : there is 
 no deception in the sick chamber ; the veil of 
 the temple is removed, and humanity lies before 
 the attendant, in all its truth, in all its helpless- 
 ness, and for the honourable physician it lies 
 if we may be allowed the expression in all its 
 holiness. No such medical attendant, we ven- 
 ture to assert, ever went through a long life of
 
 LITERARY HABITS. 13 
 
 practice, and had reason to think worse of his 
 fellow-men for the knowledge of humanity he 
 obtained at the bed-side of the sick. Far from 
 it, the misintelligence, the misapprehension, that 
 in society are the groundless source of the ani- 
 mosities which put even the feelings of the phi- 
 lanthropist to the test, are here unknown ; the 
 only wonder of the physician is, that amidst so 
 much suffering as he is daily called to witness, 
 human nature should be presented to his view 
 in so good, and not unfrequently in so noble, 
 an aspect. 
 
 It is not amongst the Harvey s, the Hunters, 
 or the Heberdens of our country, or indeed 
 amongst the enlightened physicians of any other, 
 that we must look for the disciples of a gloomy 
 misanthropy. 
 
 In spite of all the Rochefoucaults, who have 
 libelled humanity, in spite of all the cynics,
 
 14 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 who have snarled at its character, the tendency 
 of the knowledge of our fellow-men, is to make 
 us love mankind. It is to the practical, and 
 thorough knowledge of human nature, which the 
 physician attains by the exercise of his art, that 
 the active benevolence and general liberality 
 which peculiarly distinguishes the medical pro- 
 fession, is mainly to be attributed. " Do I, 1 ' 
 says Zimmerman, " in my medical character 
 feel any malignity or hatred to my species, when 
 I study the nature, and explore the secret 
 causes of those weaknesses and disorders which 
 are incidental to the human frame ; when I 
 examine the subject, and point out, for the ge- 
 neral benefit of all mankind, as well as for my 
 own satisfaction, all the frail and imperfect 
 parts in the anatomy of the human body ?" 
 
 The more extensive our knowledge of human 
 nature is, and the better acquainted we make
 
 LITERARY HABITS. 15 
 
 ourselves with that strong influence which mind 
 and body mutually exert, the greater will be 
 the indulgence towards the errors of our species, 
 and the more will our affections be enlarged. 
 How slight are those alterations in health 
 almost imperceptible to the ordinary observer 
 which have produced or aggravated the gravest 
 mental infirmities ! And how incapable is he of 
 forming a just idea of them, who is unable, not 
 only to detect, but to estimate the importance 
 of those apparently trivial physical derange- 
 ments with which they are so intimately con- 
 nected ! 
 
 It would be a folly to imagine that an ordi- 
 nary disease exerts such an absolute dominion 
 over the mind, that the moral perceptions are over- 
 powered or perverted, and that the individual 
 ceases to be responsible for his errors. When 
 the intemperate man " puts an enemy into his
 
 16 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 mouth to steal away his senses," and under 
 its maddening influence commits a violent as- 
 sault upon his neighbour, no one doubts but 
 that a state of temporary insanity was produc- 
 tive of the offence ; nevertheless, the offender 
 knew that such insanity was the inevitable con- 
 sequence of intemperance, and he is punished 
 for it accordingly. 
 
 The literary man who indulges in habits 
 prejudicial to his health, cannot be supposed 
 ignorant of the effects that must arise from 
 excessive application ; and who can say he is 
 guiltless of the infirmities he drags upon 
 him? 
 
 There is a case in our criminal records of a 
 thief going out in the middle of the night to 
 rob a hen-roost, and being attacked by a dog, 
 he fired at the animal, and chanced to kill a 
 servant of its owner, who had concealed him-
 
 LITERARY HABITS. 17 
 
 self behind the kennel. There was no malice ; 
 the mischief was unpremeditated, but the last 
 degree of violence was incidental to the first, 
 and the law did not hold him guiltless of the 
 murder. 
 
 The studious man sets out with stealing an 
 hour or two from his ordinary repose ; some- 
 times perhaps more ; and finishes by devoting 
 whole nights to his pursuits. But this night- 
 work leads to exhaustion, and the universal 
 sense of sinking in every organ that accompanies 
 it, suggests the use of stimulants, most pro- 
 bably of wine ; alcohol, however, in some shape 
 or other. And what is the result ? why, the 
 existence that is passed in a constant circle of 
 excitement and exhaustion, is shortened, or 
 rendered miserable by such alternations; and 
 the victim becomes accessary to his own suffer- 
 ings.
 
 18 THE EFFECTS OF 
 
 These are, indeed, extreme cases, yet are 
 they cases in point; in all, are the offenders held 
 responsible for their crimes or errors, but never- 
 theless are they entitled to our pity. 
 
 In a word, if the literary man consume his 
 strength and spirits in his study, forego all ne- 
 cessary exercise, keep his mind continually on 
 the stretch, and even, at his meals, deprive the 
 digestive organs of that nervous energy which 
 is then essential to their healthy action ; if the 
 proteiform symptoms of dyspepsia at last make 
 their appearance, and the innumerable anoma- 
 lous sufferings which, under the name of nervous 
 and stomachic ailments, derange the viscera, and 
 rack the joints of the invalid ; if by constant 
 application, the blood is continually determined 
 to the brain, and the calibre of the vessels en- 
 larged to the extent of causing pressure or effu-
 
 LITERARY HABITS. 19 
 
 sion in that vital organ ; in any case, if the 
 mischief there is allowed to proceed slowly 
 and steadily, perhaps for years, (as in the case 
 of Swift,) giving rise to a long train of nervous 
 miseries to hypochondria in its gloomiest form, 
 or mania in its wildest mood, or paralysis in 
 the expressionless aspect of fatuity, (that fre- 
 quent termination of the literary career;) who 
 can deny that the sufferer has, in a great mea- 
 sure, drawn the evil on himself, but who will 
 not admit that his infirmities of mind and 
 body are entitled to indulgence and com- 
 passion ? 
 
 The errors of genius demand no less. " A 
 vigorous mind," says Burke, " is as necessarily 
 accompanied by violent passions, as a great 
 fire with great heat." And to such a mind, 
 whatever be its frailties, the just and the
 
 20 THE EFFECTS OF LITERARY HABITS. 
 
 charitable will be inclined to deem it, like poor 
 Burns, 
 
 " Misled by fancy's meteor ray, 
 
 By passion driven, 
 But yet the light that led astray 
 
 Was light from heaven."
 
 ADVANTAGES OF LITERARY PURSUITS. 21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ADVANTAGES OF LITERARY PURSUITS. 
 
 A DISTINCTION has been made between literary 
 men and men of letters ; the former title has 
 been given to authors, the latter to the general 
 scholar and lover of science. 
 
 In these volumes the term literary is applied 
 to all persons who make books the business of 
 their lives, or who are addicted to studious 
 habits; and our observations apply to those who 
 think too much on any subject, whether that 
 subject be connected with legal, polemical, or 
 medical erudition.
 
 22 ADVANTAGES OF 
 
 Literature of late years has become so ge- 
 neral a pursuit, that it is no small stock of 
 knowledge which enables a man to keep pace 
 with public information : go into what society 
 we may, we are sure of meeting some indivi- 
 dual with all the honours of recent authorship 
 thick upon him. 
 
 It is the purport of this chapter to point out 
 the use and the abuse of studious habits and 
 literary temperaments. Perhaps the greatest 
 of the advantages are those which are least ob- 
 vious to the observer. It is not denied by 
 many, that every facility afforded to the acqui- 
 sition of knowledge is an advancement of the 
 public good; and, moreover, an avoidance of 
 the mischief which leisure unoccupied inflicts 
 on life. 
 
 But the latter benefit is generally over- 
 looked only because the tendency is natural
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 23 
 
 to underrate the importance of familiar facts. 
 It surely is not the least advantage of literary 
 employment that it enables us to live in a state 
 of blissful ignorance of our next-door neigh- 
 bour's fortune, faith, and politics ; that it pro- 
 duces a state of society which admits of no 
 invasion on domestic privacy, and furnishes us 
 with arms against ennui, which supersede the 
 necessity of a standing army of elderly female 
 moralists, and domestic politicians. In large 
 cities, at least, literature occupies the ground 
 which politics and scandal keep possession of in 
 small ones ; in the time of Tacitus the evil was 
 common to the communities of both : 
 
 " Vitium parvis magnisque civitatibus commune 
 Ignorantium et invidiam.' 
 
 Leisure, it seems, had no better occupation
 
 24 ADVANTAGES OF 
 
 ere " the art of multiplying manuscripts 
 through the intervention of machinery" was dis- 
 covered; but in these days of book-publishing 
 celebrity, when the Press pours volumes on the 
 town with the velocity of Perkin's steam-gun, 
 one has hardly sufficient leisure to acquire a 
 knowledge even of the names of those " dread 
 counterfeits'" of dead men's thoughts, which 
 living plagiarism is continually recasting and 
 sending forth. The grand distinction between 
 metropolitan and provincial society, is the 
 dearth of literature in the latter. In country 
 towns every individual has a portion of his 
 time to devote to country politics, or, as he 
 thinks, to the affairs of his country ; and these 
 matters engross too much of his attention to 
 allow him either time or taste for books. If 
 we analyze the bane of all provincial society, 
 the result of the painful investigation is to
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 25 
 
 leave no other ingredients in the crucible of the 
 mind, than politics and scandal. The former 
 is confined to no one portion of country life 
 it pervades the whole; it constitutes half the 
 business of existence, it forms the first of all its 
 recreations, and embroils a neighbourhood of 
 perhaps the kindest hearted beings in perpetual 
 heart-burnings. But however useful and plea- 
 sant it may be to devote attention to public 
 matters, to the affairs of kingdoms, or contested 
 counties, to suffer these subjects to absorb all 
 the faculties of the mind, is to indulge in a 
 passion which becomes the pest of society. 
 Politics may be the profession of Mr. Hume, 
 the trade of Mr. Cobbett, the calling of Mr. 
 Hunt, and the clerical vocation of that gen- 
 tleman who enjoys the enviable title of the 
 Devil's Chaplain; but if we delude ourselves 
 with the idea that we exert any happy influence 
 VOL. i. c
 
 26 ADVANTAGES OF 
 
 over our country, or our own peace, by the 
 unceasing agitation of political questions, we 
 have formed a mistaken notion of our duties, as 
 well as of our recreations. It is not to politics 
 we must look for the enjoyment of tranquil 
 leisure, nor from them we are to expect that 
 happiness which in a great degree depends upon 
 ourselves. 
 
 " How small of all that human hearts endure, 
 That part which laws or kings can cause or cure ; 
 Still to ourselves in every place consigned. 
 Our own felicity we make or find." 
 
 In fact, the domineering passion for politics 
 which so largely prevails in provincial towns, 
 if it deserve the name of a recreation, is one of 
 that sort which his Plutonic majesty may be 
 supposed to feel a peculiar interest in pro- 
 moting, in those dominions where hatred,
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 27 
 
 malice, and all uncharitableness are presumed 
 to dwell. The tendency of literature, on the 
 other hand, is to turn the current of our 
 thoughts into the more gentle streams of private 
 happiness ; and it is literature alone, that can 
 banish the demon of party discord from the 
 social board, where the sound of politics is the 
 signal for strife ; from the private circle, where 
 calumny has been putting " rancours in the 
 vessels of our peace;" and even from the pre- 
 cincts of the boudoir, where the breath of 
 scandal not unfrequently contaminates the rosy 
 atmosphere of love itself. If the tea-table has 
 ceased to be the terrible areopagus of village 
 politics, where private reputation used formerly 
 to be consigned to the tender mercies of maiden 
 gentlewomen and venerable matrons, whose 
 leisure had 110 other occupation it is because 
 literature has afforded them an employment 
 
 c 2
 
 ZO ADVANTAGES OF 
 
 more pleasing to themselves, and less injurious 
 to others. It would be idle to expatiate on the 
 good which literary pursuits are calculated to 
 effect in every circle. The country gentleman 
 need not be reminded that literature, of all 
 sports, even when pursued as a mere desultory 
 pastime, is the noblest pleasure that can be 
 chased. The military man is well aware that 
 the days of Ensign Northerton are long gone 
 by, and that it has ceased to be the fashion to 
 shoot maledictions at literature, even through 
 the sides of Homer. The learned professions 
 are no longer ashamed to couple their graver 
 studies with the lighter graces of erudition, 
 whose tendrils may cling around the loftiest 
 branches of science without encumbering its 
 technical attainments. The higher orders are 
 well aware, that when the " blood of all the 
 Howards" 1 cannot ennoble an unenlightened
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 29 
 
 lord, a literary name may afford a title to 
 immortality that any nobleman might be proud 
 to aspire to. The middling classes of society 
 have too much of that " strong, sound, round- 
 about common sense" which Locke has ascribed 
 to them, to deceive themselves with the pretext 
 that the duties of any avocation are incompatible 
 with literary pursuits, or to need the authority 
 of Seneca for the conviction that l( leisure 
 without books is the sepulture of the living 
 soul. 1 " The first advantage of a literary and 
 scientific institution in provincial towns, is the 
 bringing of those together who only require to 
 see one another in the social light of literary 
 intercourse, to esteem each other's worth more 
 highly than individuals of the same community 
 often do. 
 
 Nothing tends more to the small sweet 
 courtesies of life than the extension of know-
 
 30 ADVANTAGES OF 
 
 ledge, the removal of ignorance and prejudice. 
 " The commonwealth of letters," to use the 
 elegant language of a modern philosopher, " is 
 of no party, and of no nation ; it is a pure 
 republic, and always at peace; its shades are 
 disturbed not by domestic malice, or foreign 
 levy ; they resound not with the cries of fac- 
 tion, or public animosity ; falsehood is the only 
 enemy their inhabitants denounce ; Truth, and 
 her minister Reason, is the only guide they fol- 
 low." In a word, every mode of developing 
 the god-like apprehension which is the connect- 
 ing medium between mere organic and spi- 
 ritual existence, is a vindication of our title 
 to immortality, and an evidence of the nobility 
 of that attribute on which we rest our su- 
 periority over the brute creation. " It is 
 through literature and science," says Davy, 
 '* that we may look forward with confidence to
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 31 
 
 a state of society in which the different orders and 
 classes of men, will contribute more effectually 
 to the support of each other than they have 
 hitherto done. Considering and hoping that the 
 human species is capable of becoming more en- 
 lightened and more happy, we can only expect 
 that the different parts of the great whole of so- 
 ciety should be intimately united by means of 
 knowledge ; that they should act as the children 
 of one great Parent, with one determinate end, so 
 that no power may be rendered useless, and no 
 exertions thrown away."
 
 ABUSES OF 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ABUSES OF LITERARY PURSUITS. 
 
 THE disadvantages of literature, and conse- 
 quently the advantages of ignorance, are much 
 better understood in Turkish countries, and a 
 more salutary terror entertained of them than 
 in any Christian clime. But even in the latter, 
 there are many good and able men amongst 
 whom we are happy to be able to place that 
 very respectable and consistent gentleman, Mr. 
 William Cobbett who regard the march of 
 intellect with no very favourable eyes, and who 
 think, with the martyr of the gridiron, that the
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 33 
 
 progress of crime is in a direct ratio with the 
 pace of " the schoolmaster," and that the result 
 of the labours of that great functionary has 
 been neither conducive to the peace of Europe, 
 or the tranquillity of England. If the school- 
 master has been abroad, verily it must be 
 acknowledged, the democrat has followed so 
 closely at his heels, that the energies awakened 
 by the former have been seized on and per- 
 verted by the latter. And truly it must be 
 confessed, the benevolent intentions of the 
 schoolmaster have been too often like those of 
 the republican philanthropist towards the needy 
 knife-grinder. The husks of science have been 
 too frequently the only gifts he had to offer, 
 when the popular stomach had need of some- 
 thing more substantial. A famished tailor, to 
 very little purpose, acquires a smattering of 
 geometry; a butcher, of algebra; or any 
 
 c 5
 
 34 ABUSES OP 
 
 others of the order of " the great unwashed, 1 ' 
 of an elementary knowledge of political economy; 
 milliners, to little advantage, may become 
 cunning in conchology; and even tradesmen 
 when they dunned us, might present themselves 
 at our doors, embodying in their persons all the 
 principles of the exact sciences, and yet derive 
 no benefit from their knowledge of mathematics. 
 The schoolmaster has indeed been abroad in 
 the lower walks of life, but may he not have 
 commenced, like the Irish tutor, at the wrong 
 end of learning, and launched his raw disciples 
 too soon into the great ocean of erudition, and 
 too prematurely set them afloat, with the pro- 
 mise of a pleasant and profitable voyage ? 
 Such a voyage might be agreeable enough 
 when no perils were at hand ; but " if their poor 
 deluded bark " had to encounter the squalls or 
 party strife and the surge of discontent, like
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 35 
 
 unskilful mariners, they might be likely to 
 hug a rocky shore, and discover, when it was 
 too late, they had been turned adrift without 
 chart or compass to direct or guide them, or 
 enable them to take advantage of the security 
 of good sea room. 
 
 This grievous error of the schoolmaster, 
 we apprehend, has had much to do with the 
 ridicule that has been thrown on the march 
 of intellect. The minds of the middling classes 
 may have been prepared for the reception of 
 the elements of scientific knowledge, but not so 
 with the capacities of the lower classes ; useful 
 and agreeable instruction of a literary kind was 
 what was adapted to them, and that precisely 
 which they did not receive. 
 
 A society for the diffusion of rational happi- 
 ness, peaceful, orderly, and contented feelings, 
 was the sort of society whose labours might
 
 3D ABUSES OF 
 
 have been useful to the rural population ; these 
 might have tended to have rendered them con- 
 tented with their lot, while other efforts may 
 have been only calculated to raise them above 
 it, and even make them dissatisfied with its 
 laborious duties. Of late, however, many cheap 
 productions, combining useful and amusing mat- 
 ter, free from politics, and fitted for their capa- 
 cities, have sprung up ; but it is surprising how 
 few of them have yet made their way into the 
 hands of the peasantry. Were they more gene- 
 rally diffused, it is very probable that the beer- 
 shops, with the weekly provision of penny re- 
 publicanism, those inseparable companions the 
 " Register," and the " Poor Man's Guardian," 
 would lose a great portion of their attraction. 
 
 Some paradoxical philosophers have exercised 
 their ingenuity in maintaining that knowledge is 
 a source of misery, and that ignorance is bliss.
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 37 
 
 Solomon himself was not insensible to the 
 " delitias ineptiarum;" in the multitude of 
 wisdom, says the wise man, is grief, and he that 
 increaseth wisdom increaseth sorrow. The old 
 Latin axiom will have no great genius free from 
 a dash of insanity. Festus told St. Paul that 
 much learning had made him mad ; and So- 
 phocles has lauded the beatitude of ignorance, 
 " nihil scire vita jocundissima" Machiavel 
 forbade princes to addict themselves to learning. 
 Martial recommends us to break our inkstands, 
 and burn our books ; and an ancient physician 
 affirms that the common course of education 
 doth no other than to make the student a learned 
 fool, or a sickly wise man. 
 
 There is, however, an observation in the 
 " Adventurer," which, although " a modern in- 
 stance," is more to the purpose than any of the 
 " old saws" we have just quoted. " If we ap-
 
 .38 ABUSES OF 
 
 ply to authors themselves for an account of their 
 state, it will appear very little to deserve envy, 
 for they have been in all ages addicted to com- 
 plaint, and few have left their names to poste- 
 rity without some appeal to future candour from 
 the perverseness of malice of their own times. 
 We have, nevertheless, been inclined to doubt 
 whether authors, however querulous, are in 
 reality more miserable than their fellow- 
 men." 
 
 The truth is, the abuses of study are its only 
 disadvantages. St. Austin has well called it 
 " scientia scientiarum, omni melle dulcior, 
 omni pane suavior, omni vino hilarior." No 
 wonder if the student, in the enjoyment of such 
 a pleasure, forget the pangs which over appli- 
 cation is sure to entail on the constitution. It 
 
 i 
 
 is indeed so seductive a pursuit, that the wear 
 and tear of mind and body produce no imme-
 
 LITEEAEY PURSUITS. 39 
 
 diate weariness, and at the moment no apparent 
 ills. But study has no sabbath, the mind of the 
 student has no holiday, " the labour he delights 
 in physics pain;" he works his brain as if its 
 delicate texture was an imperishable material 
 which no excess was capable of injuring. Idle- 
 ness to him is the aerugo animi the rubigo in- 
 genii ; but the insidious corrosive of intense 
 thought and incessant study is taken into no 
 account, its certain effects are overlooked be- 
 cause its action at the time is imperceptible. 
 " Surely," says Ficinus, " scholars are the 
 most foolish men in the world ; other men look 
 to their tools a painter will wash his pencils, a 
 smith will look to his hammer, a husbandman 
 will mind his plough-irons, a huntsman will 
 have a care of his hounds, a musician of his 
 lute scholars alone neglect that instrument 
 which they daily use, by which they range over
 
 40 ABUSES OF 
 
 the world, and which, by study, is much con- 
 sumed." 
 
 It seems, indeed, little short of madness to 
 neglect that instrument on the condition of 
 whose delicate chords the harmony of every 
 tone of intellect depends, and which, once 
 " jangled out of time and harsh," all the sweet 
 music of the settled mind is spoiled, perhaps, 
 for ever. 
 
 And what is there in the sanctam in- 
 saniam of genius to enamour us of its gloom, 
 and to walk in the paths of error which lead to 
 it? error gratissimus mentis it may be, and se- 
 ductive as the fascination of passion and poetry 
 can make it, but what is there in the distem- 
 pered visions of Tasso, Cowper, Collins, Sharpe, 
 or Swift, to reconcile us to the ecstasies of the 
 disordered mind, or to suffer us to persist in 
 the same habits, or continue the same ex-
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 43 
 
 cessive exertions which, disturbed their rea- 
 son ? 
 
 So long as life is admitted to be the result of 
 the co-existence of mind and body so long as 
 we are convinced of the intimacy of their union 
 by the manner in which they reciprocally sym- 
 pathise with each other so long as we perceive 
 
 * 
 
 the powers of the mind augmenting with health, 
 and diminishing with disease so long as we 
 observe that the mind is incapable of occupa- 
 tion when the body is wearied by violent exer- 
 cise, and in its turn unfitted for exercise, when 
 the mental powers are fatigued by over exertion 
 of the former we can arrive but at one conclu- 
 sion, that the balance of health can be main- 
 tained in its natural equilibrium only when 
 mental exertion is proportioned to bodily acti- 
 vity. When this is not the case literary fame 
 is dearly purchased; and all the glory that
 
 42 ABUSES OF 
 
 surrounds it cannot make amends for the health 
 that has been sacrificed for its attainment. 
 " On est trop savant quand on Test au depens 
 de sa santc ; a quoi sert la science sans le bon- 
 heur?" 
 
 In conclusion, there are a few words of 
 Tissot's which serve the purpose of a summary 
 of the preceding observations. To comprehend 
 the influence of mental labour on physical 
 health, it is only necessary to remember, in the 
 first place, that the brain is in action when one 
 thinks ; secondly, that the tendency of continual 
 action is to produce fatigue, and that fatigue 
 deranges the functions, because every debilitated 
 organ performs its duties imperfectly and irre- 
 gularly; thirdly, that all the nerves proceed 
 from the brain, and precisely from that part of 
 it which is the organ of thought, the common 
 sensorium ; fourthly, that the nerves are one of
 
 LITERARY PURSUITS. 43 
 
 the most important parts of the human ma- 
 chine, that they are necessary to every func- 
 tion, and that when once their action is de- 
 ranged, the whole animal economy suffers from 
 that derangement
 
 44 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 BUT what is this subtle fluid which exerts so 
 wonderful an influence over mind and body? 
 Under how many names has the knowledge of 
 its nature baffled human inquiry in all ages! 
 and how ignorant still are we of its essence ! 
 still is it known to us only by its effects. 
 
 We feel when the nervous energy abounds 
 that every thing is well with us ; we find when 
 it is deficient that we are depressed ; we know 
 if it is exhausted that we become debilitated ;
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 45 
 
 and if suddenly destroyed, that death must 
 immediately ensue ! 
 
 Is it then the vital principle, or the cause 
 of it or is it indeed the cause of that effect 
 which Brown mistook for animation, when he 
 asserted that irritability was life itself ? Mo- 
 tion, no doubt, is the grand characteristic of 
 life ; but motion is only the consequence of irri- 
 tability. The propulsion of the blood is im- 
 mediately caused by the irritability of the 
 muscular fibres of the heart and its channels ; 
 but nature accomplishes all her phenomena 
 by physical agency. To what agent, there- 
 fore, are we to refer this irritability, before 
 we arrive at the ultimate cause of life that 
 causa causarum which is God ! Is it to elec- 
 trical agency we are to look for the solution of 
 the mystery ? or is there any thing analogous 
 to the principle of life in the phenomena of the
 
 46 THE NERVOUS ENEEGY. 
 
 electric fluid ? The nervous energy, however, 
 is so much a part and parcel of the vital prin- 
 ciple, their union is so intimate, that whether 
 they stand in the relation of cause and effect, 
 or are different names only for the same essence, 
 they cannot be separately considered. The few 
 observations that follow are not altogether irre- 
 levant to the subject of these pages, nor is there 
 any thing beyond the range of legitimate in- 
 quiry, in the consideration of the nature of that 
 power which is the source of animation. Were 
 we, indeed, to jump at the summary conclusion, 
 that life is the sum total of the functions, as some 
 have asserted, we should fall into the error of 
 mistaking a subordinate effect for an original 
 cause ; forgetting, that although life is co-ex- 
 istent with the developement and cessation of 
 these functions, it is the nervous energy which 
 calls them into action. Whatever be its nature,
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 47 
 
 it is yet an intermediate link, evident, though 
 not obvious in that perpetual chain of cause 
 and effect which is the connecting medium be- 
 tween animation and the great Author of it. 
 
 " The first link of that chain," says Darwin, 
 " is rivetted to the throne of God, dividing it- 
 self into innumerable diverging branches, which, 
 like the nerves arising from the brain, permeate 
 the most minute and most remote extremities of 
 the system, diffusing motion and sensation 
 through the whole. 
 
 " As every cause is superior in power to the 
 effect which it has produced, so our idea of the 
 power of the Almighty Creator becomes more 
 elevated and sublime, as we trace the operations 
 of nature from cause to cause; climbing up 
 the links of those chains of beings, till we ascend 
 to the great source of all things." 
 
 The doctrine which would have us suppose
 
 48 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 that this wonderful machine, the human frame, 
 originated in a fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
 has its error in failing to trace the causes of the 
 combination of matter to their remote origin, 
 and therefore chaos and its products are to this 
 system what nature and the results of her well- 
 ordered designs, are to true philosophy. The 
 doctrine we allude to confounds the attributes 
 of mind with the properties of matter, by re- 
 ferring the mental faculties to the aggrega- 
 tion of the functions of the body. This is not 
 only the error of ascribing remote results to their 
 nearest origins, but of referring dissimilar 
 effects to the same immutable cause. This 
 doctrine, like that of Pythagoras, travels in a 
 continual circle of life and death, and the only 
 two truths it admits are, death, because it is 
 certain and inevitable, and reproduction, be- 
 cause every thing that lives must die and under-
 
 I 
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 49 
 
 die and undergo the process of decomposition, 
 before its particles again acquire vitality, and 
 enter into the formation of new compounds. 
 
 The whole history of humanity is to this sys- 
 tem, one series of transformations, 
 
 " Nothing of it that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea change 
 Into something rare and strange." 
 
 To it, of all abodes, the grave is the most preg- 
 nant with vitality ; every corse that is consigned to 
 earth, confers life on myriads of other creatures 
 who had not known that enjoyment if death had 
 not occurred. But even though every atom on 
 the surface of the earth may have been a por- 
 tion of something once living, now inert though 
 humanity may not shuffle off its " mortal coil," 
 without peopling the clay which covers it 
 with its spoils, where is the spirit to be sought 
 that animated man in what unhallowed recep- 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 tacle has the aura of intellect taken up its 
 abode ? 
 
 " Thou apart, 
 
 Above, beyond, tell me, mighty mind, 
 Where art thou ! shall I dive into the deep, 
 Call to the sun, or ask the roaring winds, 
 Where art thou?" 
 
 In this dreary doctrine, trivial truths are 
 curiously considered, and those of most impor- 
 tance wholly overlooked. It illustrates the 
 horrors of death, and renders the hope of future 
 life a repugnant feeling, a loathsome anticipa- 
 tion. Its lights are like -the lamps in sepulchres, 
 they gleam upon the dead, but they give no 
 lustre to the living. That light of life, that 
 god-like apprehension which renders man the 
 monarch of created beings, is wholly lost sight 
 of in the inquiry after the final disposition of 
 the particles of which his body is composed.
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 51 
 
 Life and death have their analogies for this 
 system, but the spirit of man and immortality 
 have none ! There is no link between humanity 
 and heaven ! The body is allowed to have its 
 transformations, but the mind is not worthy of 
 a transmigration, not even to be portioned 
 among the worms which have their being in 
 our forms. 
 
 By whatever name this vital principle is de- 
 signated, animus or anima, aura or efflatus, 
 spark or flame, etherial or celestial, perplexity 
 at every step besets the doctrine of its extinc- 
 tion. And however speciously, and even sin- 
 cerely, its entertainer may uphold it, still in 
 secret there are, there must be, misgivings of its 
 truth. 
 
 " And yet one doubt 
 
 Pursues him still, lest all he cannot die 
 Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of man, 
 Which God inspired, cannot together perish 
 
 D 2
 
 52 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 With this corporeal clod ; then in the grave, 
 Or in some dismal place, who knows 
 But he shall die a living death ! O thought 
 Most horrible, if true !" 
 
 In a word, the error of this doctrine, like 
 that of many others, is, in attributing obvioui 
 effects to their immediate instead of their remote 
 and ultimate cause, and in tracing similitude* 
 in dissimilar analogies.
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 THE nature of this vital fluid has been the en- 
 quiry of all ages, and up to the present time it 
 must be admitted that nothing is known of its 
 essence. Its effects, both in animal and vege- 
 table life, have been found in some important 
 respects to be analogous with those of an agent 
 the most wonderful in nature, the most subtle 
 of all fluids, the most powerful of all stimu- 
 lants in its action on the life, whether of plants 
 or animals the electric fluid. 
 
 Although science, (with all the rapidity of its
 
 54 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 march,) has thrown little if any additional light 
 on its phenomena for the last thirty years, yet 
 a few facts have been noticed whose tendency is 
 to show that there is a similitude between the 
 phenomena of the nervous and the electric 
 fluids. 
 
 Whenever the properties of the latter shall 
 be better understood than they are at present, 
 in all probability the principle of the nervous 
 energy will be more cognizable to the range 
 (limited as it must necessarily always be) of 
 human knowledge. A day, in all probability, 
 will come, when the genius of some future 
 Franklin will make that c< fifth element, 11 and 
 most powerful of all, better known than it now 
 is ; and trace the analogies of the subtle spark 
 which pervades all space, with that corporeal 
 fire which fills the nerves with life, and heat, 
 and communicates vitality and vigor, to every
 
 THE 2HERVOUS ENERGY. 55 
 
 fibre of the heart and its remotest vessels. The 
 nature of the nervous energy may then become 
 better understood, and that invisible aura 
 which fans the blood and invigorates the body, 
 be known to us by something more than its 
 effects. 
 
 " In this view," to use the words of one who 
 applied electrical agency to the grandest dis- 
 coveries of our time, " we do not look to dis- 
 tant ages, or amuse ourselves with brilliant, 
 though delusive dreams, concerning infinite im- 
 probability or the annihilation of disease or 
 death. But we reason by analogy from simple 
 facts. We consider only a state of human pro- 
 gression arising out of its present condition ; we 
 look for a time that we may reasonably expect, 
 for a bright day of which we already behold 
 the dawn !" 
 
 The influence which electricity exerts over
 
 56 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 vegetable life, till very lately has been over- 
 looked, and even now the same fashion which 
 domineers in academies as well as in boudoirs, 
 has rendered the doctrine of animal, or rather 
 vital electricity, as apparently ridiculous as that 
 of electro-chemical agency was considered, be- 
 fore Davy, by its means, changed the whole face 
 of that science which he so nobly cultivated. 
 Nothing, perhaps, has tended more to the 
 discredit of this theory than the inordinate 
 expectations which medical electricity called 
 forth some forty or fifty years ago, when it was 
 ushered into practice as a universal remedy, and 
 which shared the fate of all new remedies whose 
 powers are over-rated, abused, and ultimately 
 decried. But of late years, on the continent, 
 the influence of the electric fluid on vitality has 
 again forced itself on public attention ; and in 
 the south of France we have seen whole vine-
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 57 
 
 yards in which numerous electrical conductors 
 were attached to the plants, for the purpose of 
 increasing the progress of vegetation, and of in- 
 vigorating the vines. 
 
 In the same manner does electricity act on 
 the animal body, the circulation being quick- 
 ened by its stimulus, and the fluids driven 
 through the small capillary vessels with in- 
 creased velocity. Some recent discoveries of 
 Dr. Wilson Phillip have proved that the circu- 
 lation in the smaller capillary tubes may con- 
 tinue for some hours after death, and that their 
 current in life is not synchronous with that of 
 the heart, and, indeed, that the doctrine of the 
 circulation of the blood is inadequate to the ex- 
 planation of the phenomenon just mentioned. 
 
 The facts that are stated we have no reason 
 to doubt ; on the contrary, further experience 
 will probably tend to corroborate them; but
 
 00 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the ex- 
 planation which is given of the phenomenon. 
 
 An observation of Brydone, however, throws 
 no little light on the subject : " If you cause 
 water," he says, " to drop through a small ca- 
 pillary tube, the moment you electrify the tube 
 the fluid runs in a full stream. Electricity," 
 he adds, " must be considered as the great 
 vivifying principle of nature, by which she car- 
 ries on most of her operations. It is the most 
 subtle and active of all fluids it is a kind of 
 soul which pervades and quickens every part of 
 nature. When an equal quantity of electricity 
 is diffused through the air, and over the face of 
 the earth, every thing is calm and quiet, but if 
 by accident one part of matter has acquired a 
 greater quantity than another, the most dread- 
 ful consequences ensue before the equilibrium 
 can be restored : nature is convulsed, and thun-
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 59 
 
 der, lightning, earthquakes, and whirlwinds 
 
 ensue." 
 
 But it is not the elements only that are 
 thrown into disorder, by these electrical changes 
 in the atmosphere, every thing that is organic 
 suffers by them ; the vigor of plants is dimi- 
 nished, the animal functions are disturbed, and 
 the nervous system, of delicate individuals, 
 strangely and unaccountably depressed. 
 
 Who has experienced the influence of the 
 scirrocco of the south of Europe, the poison- 
 ous kamsin of the East, or even the summer 
 south-east wind of our own clime, without feel- 
 ings of indescribable lassitude, which are not to 
 be accounted for by any alteration in the tempera- 
 ture, but solely to the variation in the quantity 
 of electricity diffused through the atmosphere. 
 In the prevalence of these winds, the air is 
 nearly deprived of it altogether, and the ner-
 
 I 
 
 60 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 vous system is simultaneously deprived of its 
 elasticity. In damp weather likewise, when it 
 becomes absorbed by the surrounding humidity, 
 every invalid is well aware how unaccountably 
 dejected his spirits become, and how feebly the 
 various functions of the body are performed, 
 especially those of the digestive organs. This 
 state of morbid irritability of the whole frame 
 continues till the north or west wind, as Bry- 
 done has well expressed it, " awakens the acti- 
 vity of the animating power of electricity, which 
 soon restores our energies and enlivens all na- 
 ture, which seemed to droop and languish in 
 its absence." 
 
 In very frosty weather, on the other hand, 
 when the atmosphere is surcharged with elec- 
 tricity, there is a corresponding elevation of 
 spirits, which sometimes amounts to an almost 
 painful state of excitement. In our temperate
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 61 
 
 climate, this phenomenon, perhaps, is seldom 
 experienced, but, in a certain degree, its influ- 
 ence in very cold dry weather is evident enough . 
 On a frosty day, for one melancholy mien we 
 observe, we meet a hundred smiling faces, the 
 hilarity of whose expression is due to no other 
 cause than that which has been just named. 
 Rousseau has eloquently described the extraor- 
 dinary elasticity of spirits which he experienced 
 in ascending some of the higher regions of the 
 Alps. Every traveller is aware of the more 
 than usual lively sentiment of existence which 
 he feels within him "when he is traversing a lofty 
 mountain. 
 
 The painful effects arising from too much 
 electricity in the air, were experienced by Pro- 
 fessor Saussure and his companion, while 
 ascending the Alps : they were caught amidst 
 thunder clouds, and were astonished to find
 
 02 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 their bodies filled with electricity, and every 
 part of them so saturated with it, that sponta- 
 neous sparks were emitted with a crackling 
 noise, and the same painful sensations which 
 are felt by those who are electrified by art. 
 
 Dupuytren, in his memoirs of the Russian 
 campaign, mentions his having seen similar 
 effects, from the excess of the electric fluid. On 
 one occasion he says, when the cold was exces- 
 sive, the manes of the horses were found elec- 
 trified in a manner similar to that described by 
 Saussure. 
 
 Altogether it is truly wonderful, that an 
 agent that exerts so powerful an influence on 
 vitality, should have met with so little inquiry 
 from the time of Priestley to that of Davy, or 
 at least that no discovery, except that of electro- 
 chemical agency, should have resulted from 
 any inquiry that may have been attempted.
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 63 
 
 And that wonder is the greater, when we recall 
 the prophetic enthusiasm with which both of 
 those illustrious men, whom we have just named, 
 have spoken of the results which science has to 
 expect from the enlargement of our knowledge 
 of the elements of electricity. 
 
 Mr. Faraday, however, we are happy to find, 
 has lately taken up this neglected branch of 
 science, and made discoveries which are likely 
 to lead to most important results. 
 
 Sir Humphry Davy concludes the account of 
 the extraordinary effects he had experienced by 
 the application of electrical agency to chemical 
 action, in these words: " Natural electricity has 
 hitherto been little investigated, except in the case 
 of its evident and powerful concentration in the 
 atmosphere. Its slow and silent operations in 
 every part of tho surface of the globe will pro- 
 bably be found more immediately and impor-
 
 64 THE NERVOUS ENEEGY. 
 
 tantly connected with the order and economy 
 of nature ; and investigation on this subject can 
 hardly fail to enlighten our philosophical sys- 
 tems of the earth, and may possibly place 
 new powers within our reach." 
 
 Priestley sums up his opinions on this subject 
 in these emphatic terms : " Electricity seems to 
 be an inlet into the internal structures of bodies, 
 on which all their sensible properties depend: 
 by pursuing, therefore, this new light, the 
 bounds of natural science may possibly be ex- 
 tended beyond what we now can form any idea 
 of, New worlds may be opened to our view, 
 and the glory of the great Sir Isaac Newton 
 himself may be eclipsed, by a new set of philo- 
 sophers, in quite a new field of speculation." 
 
 Before we conclude this subject, there is a 
 circumstance respecting Davy and his biogra- 
 pher, Dr. Paris, deserving 6f attention. It ap-
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 65 
 
 pears that Davy, in common with many en- 
 lightened philosophers and physicians of the 
 present day, was dissatisfied with the explana- 
 tion which is commonly given of the physiology 
 of respiration, and the mode in which heat is 
 supposed to be evolved by that process. Where 
 Davy doubted, he was not a man likely to be 
 stopped in the search of truth, by the jargon of 
 science or the plausible fallacies of physiology. 
 He accordingly applied himself to the discovery 
 of a more satisfactory theory of respiration, and 
 the result of his inquiries was, that the nervous 
 fluid was identical with electricity, and that the 
 heat that was supposed to be evolved by the 
 process of respiration, was extricated by elec- 
 trical agency. 
 
 This theory of the identity of the nervous 
 fluid with electricity, we look upon as a con- 
 jecture (discovery it cannot be called) which
 
 66 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 
 
 will one day lead to more important results than 
 have arisen from the grandest of his electro-che- 
 mical discoveries. 
 
 His biographer tells us that " in considering 
 the theory of respiration, Davy supposed that 
 phos-oxygen combined with the venous blood 
 without decomposition ; but on reaching the 
 brain that electricity was liberated, which he 
 believed to be identical with the nervous fluid. 
 Supposing sensations to be motions of the ner- 
 vous ether, or light, in the form of electricity 
 exciting the medullary substance of the nerves 
 and brain." 
 
 This opinion Dr. Paris calls " a theory which 
 has scarely a parallel in extravagance and ab- 
 surdity ! ! !" These are strong terms. Science, 
 we think, should discard the use of harsh ones, 
 but whatever be the fate of this opinion of 
 Davy's, the commentary has no parallel in pre- 
 sumption.
 
 THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 67 
 
 The theory of the identity of the nervous and 
 electric fluid may receive little countenance for 
 a time; it may be too much contemned to attract 
 even the notoriety of opposition to its doctrine; 
 it may be buried in oblivion for half a century, 
 but the ghost of this opinion will rise again, 
 though it may not be in judgment against its 
 impugners their peaceful slumbers will pro- 
 bably be too profound to be incommoded by 
 the resurgam of the opinion they opposed. 
 Perhaps when Davy propounded it, he might 
 have thought like Kepler, " My theory may 
 not be received at present, but posterity will 
 adopt it. I can afford to wait thirty or forty 
 years for the world's justice, since nature has 
 waited three thousand years for an observer;" 
 for Davy, like Kepler, had his moments of 
 " glorious egotism," but like the astronomer, 
 he had genius to redeem his vanity.
 
 68 INFLUENCE OF STUDIOUS HABITS 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF STUDIOUS HABITS ON THE 
 DURATION OF LIFE. 
 
 IT is a question whether different kinds of 
 literary pursuits do not produce different dis- 
 eases, or at least, different modifications of dis- 
 ease ; but there is very little doubt, that a vast 
 difference in the duration of life is to be ob- 
 served in the various learned professions, and 
 the several directions given to mental applica- 
 tion, whether by the cultivation of poetry, the 
 study of the law, the labours of miscellaneous 
 composition, or the abstraction of philosophical
 
 ON THE DURATION OF LIFE. 69 
 
 inquiries. " Every class of genius, 1 ' says 
 D'Israeli, " has distinct habits; all poets re- 
 semble one another, as all painters, and all 
 mathematicians. There is a conformity in the 
 cast of their minds, and the quality of each is 
 distinct from the other ; the very faculty which 
 fits them for one particular pursuit is just the 
 reverse required for the other." 
 
 An excellent old author, who wrote on the 
 diseases of particular avocations about two cen- 
 turies ago, has spoken in the following terms of 
 the diseases of literary men. " Above all the 
 retainers to learning, the bad influence of study 
 and fatigue falls heaviest upon the writers of 
 books for the public, who seek to immortalize 
 their names ; by writers, I mean authors of 
 merit, for there are many, from an insatiable 
 itch for notoriety, who patch up indigested 
 medleys, and make abortive rather than mature
 
 70 INFLUENCE OF STUDIOUS HABITS 
 
 productions, like those poets who will throw 
 you off a hundred verses, ' Stantes in pede 
 uno,' as Horace as it. It is your wise and 
 grave authors, day and night, who work for 
 posterity, who wear themselves out with labour. 
 But they are not so much injured by study 
 who only covet to know what others knew 
 before them, and reckon it the best way to 
 make use of other people's madness, as Pliny 
 says of those who do not take the trouble 
 to build new houses, but rather buy and live in 
 those that are built by other people. Many of 
 these professors of learning are subject to dis- 
 eases peculiar to their respective callings, as 
 your eminent jurists, preachers, and philo- 
 sophers, who spend their lives in public 
 schools." 
 
 For the purpose of ascertaining the influence 
 of different studies on the longevity of authors,
 
 OX THE DURATION OF LIFE. 71 
 
 the tables which follow have been constructed, 
 in which the names and ages of the most cele- 
 brated authors in the various departments of 
 literature and science are set down, each list 
 containing twenty names of those individuals who 
 have devoted their lives to a particular pursuit, 
 and excelled in it. No other attention has been 
 given to the selection than that which eminence 
 suggested, without any regard to the ages of 
 those who presented themselves to notice. The 
 object was to give a fair view of the subject, 
 whether it told for or against the opinions that 
 have been expressed in the preceding pages. 
 It must, however, be taken into account, that 
 as we have only given the names of the most 
 celebrated authors, and in the last table those 
 of artists in their different departments, a 
 greater longevity in each pursuit might be 
 inferred from the aggregate of the ages than
 
 72 INFLUENCE OF STUDIOUS HABITS 
 
 properly may belong to the general range 
 of life in each pursuit. For example, in 
 moral or natural philosophy, a long life of 
 labour is necessary to enable posterity to judge 
 of the merits of an author ; and these are 
 ascertained not only by the value, but also 
 by the amount of his compositions. It is by a 
 series of researches, and re-casts of opinion, that 
 profound truths are arrived at, and by nume- 
 rous publications that such truths are forced on 
 the public attention. For this a long life is 
 necessary, and it certainly appears from the 
 list that is subjoined, that the vigour of a great 
 intellect is favourable to longevity in every 
 literary pursuit, wherein imagination is seldom 
 called on. 
 
 There is another point to be taken into con- 
 sideration, that the early years of genius are not 
 so often remarkable for precocity, as is com-
 
 ON THE DURATION OF LIFE. 73 
 
 monly supposed, and where it is otherwise, it 
 would seem that the earlier the mental faculties 
 are developed, the sooner the bodily powers 
 begin to fail. It is still the old proverb with 
 such prodigies, " So wise, so young, they say 
 do ne'er live long." Moore says, the five most 
 remarkable instances of early authorship, are 
 those of Pope, Congreve, Churchill, Chatterton, 
 and Byron." The first of these died in his fifty- 
 sixth year, the second in his fifty-eighth, the 
 third in his thirty-fourth, " the sleepless boy 11 
 committed suicide in his eighteenth, and Byron 
 died in his thirty-seventh year. 
 
 Mozart, at the age of three years, began to 
 display astonishing abilities for music, and in 
 the two following years, composed some trifling 
 pieces, which his father carefully preserved, 
 and, like all prodigies, his career was a short 
 one he died at thirty-six. Tasso from in- 
 
 VOL. i. E
 
 74 INFLUENCE OF STUDIOUS HABITS 
 
 fancy exhibited such quickness of understand- 
 ing, that at the age of five he was sent to a 
 Jesuit academy, and two years afterwards re- 
 cited verses and orations of his own composi- 
 tion ; he died at fifty-one. Dermody was 
 employed by his father, who was a school- 
 master, as an assistant in teaching the Latin 
 and Greek languages in his ninth year ; he died 
 at twenty-seven. The American prodigy, Lu- 
 cretia Davidson, was another melancholy instance 
 of precocious genius, and early death. Keats 
 wrote several pieces before he was fifteen, and 
 only reached his twenty-fifth year. The ardour 
 of Dante's temperament, we are told, was 
 manifested in his childhood. The lady he cele- 
 brated in his poems under the name of Beatrice, 
 he fell in love with at the age of ten, and his 
 enthusiasm terminated with life at fifty-six. 
 Schiller, at the age of fourteen, was the author
 
 ON THE DURATION OF LIFE, 75 
 
 of an epic poem ; he died at forty-six. Cowley 
 published a collection of his juvenile poems, 
 called " Poetical Blossoms" at sixteen, and died 
 at sixty-nine. 
 
 But it would be useless to enumerate in- 
 stances in proof of the assertion, that the earlier 
 the developement of the mental faculties, the 
 more speedy the decay of the bodily powers.* 
 
 * One of the most remarkable instances, however, of pre- 
 cocity of talent and early application, upon record, is the late 
 celebrated Archaeologist Visconti, who died in 1818, at the 
 age of sixty-seven. When only eighteen months old he knew 
 his alphabet ; at the age of two could distinguish and name 
 the busts of the Roman emperors, and is said to have read 
 Latin and Greek as well as his native language, before he had 
 completed his fourth year. 
 
 E 2
 
 76 PRECOCIOUS TALENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PRECOCIOUS TALENTS. 
 
 No common error is attended with worse con- 
 sequences to the children of genius than the 
 practice of dragging precocious talent into early 
 notice, of encouraging its growth in the hot-bed 
 of parental approbation, and of endeavouring 
 to give the dawning intellect the precocious 
 maturity of that fruit which ripens and rots 
 almost simultaneously. Tissot has admirably 
 pointed out the evils which attend the practice 
 of forcing the youthful intellect. " The ef- 
 fects of study vary," says this author, " ac-
 
 PRECOCIOUS TALENTS. 77 
 
 cording to the age at which it is commenced : 
 long-continued application kills the youthful 
 energies. I have seen children full of spirit 
 attacked by this literary mania beyond their 
 years, and I have foreseen with grief the lot 
 which awaited them ; they commenced by being 
 prodigies, and they ended by becoming stupid. 
 The season of youth is consecrated to the exer- 
 cise of the body, which strengthens it, and not 
 to study, which debilitates and prevents its 
 growth. Nature can never successfully carry 
 on two rapid developements at the same time. 
 When the growth of intellect is too prompt, 
 its faculties are too early developed, and mental 
 application is permitted proportioned to this 
 developement, the body receives no part of it, 
 because the nerves cease to contribute to its 
 energies; the victim becomes exhausted, and 
 eventually dies of some insidious malady. The
 
 78 PRECOCIOUS TALENTS. 
 
 parents and guardians who encourage or re- 
 quire this forced application, treat their pupils 
 as gardeners do their plants, who, in trying to 
 produce the first rarities of the season, sacrifice 
 some plants to force others to put forth fruit 
 and flowers which are always of a short dura- 
 tion, and are inferior in every respect to those 
 which come to their maturity at a proper 
 season." 
 
 Johnson is, indeed, of opinion, that the early 
 years of distinguished men, when minutely 
 traced, furnish evidence of the same vigour or 
 originality of mind, by which they are cele- 
 brated in after life. To a great many memo- 
 rable instances this observation does not apply, 
 but in the majority it unquestionably holds 
 good, and especially in those instances in which 
 the vigour which Johnson speaks of displays 
 itself in the developement of a taste for general
 
 PRECOCIOUS TALENTS. 79 
 
 literature, and still more for philosophical in- 
 quiries. 
 
 Scott's originality was early manifested as a 
 story-teller, and not as a scholar; the twenty- 
 fifth seat at the high school in Edinburgh was 
 no uncommon place for him. Yet was the 
 future writer of romance skilful in the invention 
 and narration of " tales of knight-errantry, and 
 battles, and enchantments !" 
 
 " Before seven years of age," says Boccaccio, 
 " when as yet I had met with no stories, was 
 without a master, and hardly knew my letters, 
 I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced 
 some little tales." 
 
 Newton, according to his own account, was 
 very inattentive to his studies, and low in his 
 class, but was a great adept at kite-flying, with 
 paper lanthorns attached to them to terrify the 
 country people of a dark night with the appear-
 
 80 PRECOCIOUS TALENTS. 
 
 ance of comets ; and when sent to market with 
 the produce of his mother's farm, was apt to 
 neglect his business, and to ruminate at an inn 
 over the laws of Kepler. 
 
 Bentham, we are told, was a remarkably for- 
 ward youth, reading Rapin's England at the 
 age of three years, as an amusement ; Telema- 
 chus, in French, at the age of seven; and at 
 eight the future patriarch of jurisprudence, it 
 appears, was a proficient on the violin. 
 
 Buonarroti, while at school, employed every 
 moment he could steal from his studies in 
 drawing. 
 
 Professor Lesley, before his twelfth year, had 
 such a talent for calculation, and geometrical 
 exercises, that when introduced to Professor 
 Robinson, and subsequently to Playfair, those 
 gentlemen were struck with the extraordinary 
 powers which he then displayed.
 
 PRECOCIOUS TALENTS. 81 
 
 Goethe, in childhood, exhibited a taste for 
 the fine arts ; and at the age of eight or nine 
 wrote a short description of twelve scriptural 
 pictures. 
 
 Franklin, unconsciously, formed the outline 
 of his future character from the scanty materials 
 of a tallow-chandler's library ; and the bias 
 which influenced his after-career, he attributes 
 to a perusal in childhood of Defoe's Essay on 
 Projections. 
 
 All these, with the exception of Scott and 
 Lesley, arrived to extreme old age ; but there 
 is nothing in the early indication of the 
 ruling pursuit of their after lives, that was 
 likely to exert an unfavourable influence on 
 health. Those early pursuits were rather re- 
 creations than laborious exertions, and far dif- 
 ferent in their effects from those we have spoken 
 of in the preceding instances of precocious talent. 
 
 E5
 
 82 PRECOCIOUS TALENTS. 
 
 That difference in the various kinds of lite- 
 rary and scientific pursuits, and the influence of 
 each on life, the following tables are intended 
 to exhibit ; each list of names, it being remem- 
 bered, containing twenty names, and the amount 
 at the bottom of each the aggregate of the 
 united ages.
 
 LONGEVITY OF AUTHORS. 
 
 83 
 
 TABLE I. 
 
 
 NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 
 1 
 
 Name. 
 Bacon, R. - - 
 
 Age. 
 78 
 
 Name. 
 Ariosto 
 
 Age. 
 59 
 
 2 
 
 Buffon 
 
 81 
 
 Burns ... 
 
 38 
 
 3 
 4 
 
 Copernicus +' 
 Cuvier 
 
 70 
 64 
 
 Byron ... 
 Camoens 
 
 37 
 55 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 Davy 
 Euler 
 
 51 
 76 
 
 Collins - '.:< 
 Cowley 
 
 56 
 
 49 
 
 7 
 
 Franklin - 
 
 85 
 
 Cowper 
 
 69 
 
 8 
 
 Galileo 
 
 78 
 
 Dante 
 
 56 
 
 9 
 
 Halley, Dr. 
 
 86 
 
 Dryden 
 
 70 
 
 10 
 
 Herschel 
 
 84 
 
 Goldsmith - 
 
 44 
 
 11 
 
 12 
 
 Kepler 
 La Lande - 
 
 60 
 75 
 
 Gray ... 
 Metastasio 
 
 57 
 84 
 
 13 
 
 La Place 
 
 77 
 
 Milton 
 
 66 
 
 14 
 
 Lowenhoeck 
 
 91 
 
 Petrarch 
 
 68 
 
 15 
 
 Leibnitz 
 
 70 
 
 Pope 
 
 56 
 
 16 
 
 Linaeus 
 
 72 
 
 Shenstone 
 
 50 
 
 17 
 
 Newton 
 
 84 
 
 Spenser 
 
 46 
 
 18 
 
 Tycho Brahe 
 
 55 
 
 Tasso ... 
 
 52 
 
 19 
 
 Whiston 
 
 95 
 
 Thomson 
 
 48 
 
 20 
 
 Wollaston 
 
 62 
 
 Young 
 
 84 
 
 
 Total 
 
 1494 
 
 Total 
 
 1144
 
 84 
 
 LONGEVITY OF AUTHORS. 
 
 TABLE II. 
 
 
 MORAL PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 DRAMATISTS. 
 
 
 1 
 
 Natne. 
 Bacon 
 
 Age. 
 65 
 
 Name. 
 Alfieri 
 
 Age. 
 55 
 
 2 
 
 Bayle . ^ J 
 
 59 
 
 Corneille 
 
 78 
 
 3 
 
 Berkeley, G 
 
 79 
 
 Goethe 
 
 82 
 
 4 
 
 Condorcet 
 
 51 
 
 Massinger 
 
 55 
 
 5 
 
 Condillac 
 
 65 
 
 Marlow 
 
 32 
 
 6 
 
 Descartes 
 
 54 
 
 Otway 
 
 34 
 
 7 
 
 Diderot 
 
 71 
 
 Racine 
 
 60 
 
 8 
 
 Ferguson, A. 
 
 92 
 
 Schiller -' - . 
 
 46 
 
 9 
 
 Fichte, J. T. 
 
 52 
 
 Shakspeare 
 
 52 
 
 10 
 
 Hartley, D. 
 
 52 
 
 Voltaire - - ; 
 
 84 
 
 11 
 
 Helvetius 
 
 57 
 
 Congreve - ? 
 
 59 
 
 12 
 
 Hobbes - <' -'^- 
 
 91 
 
 Colman, G. 
 
 61 
 
 13 
 
 Hume 
 
 65 
 
 Crebillon 
 
 89 
 
 14 
 
 Kant 
 
 80 
 
 Cumberland 
 
 80 
 
 15 
 
 Kaimes 
 
 86 
 
 Farquhar 
 
 30 
 
 16 
 
 Locke . . r >;vSrf' 
 
 72 
 
 Goldoni 
 
 85 
 
 17 
 
 Malebranche 
 
 77 
 
 Jonson, B. 
 
 63 
 
 18 
 
 Reid, T. - - 
 
 86 
 
 Lope de Vega 
 
 73 
 
 19 
 
 Stewart, D. 
 
 75 
 
 Moliere 
 
 53 
 
 90 
 
 St. Lambert 
 
 88 
 
 Murphy 
 
 78 
 
 
 Total 
 
 1417 
 
 Total 
 
 1249
 
 LONGEVITY OF AUTHORS. 
 
 85 
 
 TABLE III. 
 
 
 AUTHORS ON 
 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS AND 
 
 
 LAW AND JURISPRUDENCE. 
 
 NOVEL WRITERS. 
 
 
 1 
 
 Name. 
 Bentham 
 
 Age. 
 85 
 
 Name. 
 Cervantes 
 
 Age. 
 70 
 
 2 
 
 Blackstone 
 
 57 
 
 Le Sage 
 
 80 
 
 3 
 
 Butler, C. 
 
 83 
 
 Scott 
 
 62 
 
 4 
 
 Coke 
 
 85 
 
 Fielding 
 
 47 
 
 5 
 
 Erskine 
 
 73 
 
 Smollet . 
 
 51 
 
 6 
 
 Filangieri *t 
 
 36 
 
 Rabelais 
 
 70 
 
 7 
 
 Gifford 
 
 48 
 
 Defoe ^ 
 
 70 
 
 8 
 
 Grotius 
 
 63 
 
 Ratcliffe 
 
 60 
 
 9 
 
 Hale < ,*u 
 
 68 
 
 Richardson 
 
 72 
 
 10 
 
 Holt 
 
 68 
 
 Sterne 
 
 56 
 
 11 
 
 Littleton 
 
 75 
 
 Johnson 
 
 75 
 
 12 
 
 Mansfield 
 
 88 
 
 Addison 
 
 48 
 
 13 
 
 Montesquieu 
 
 66 
 
 Warton 
 
 78 
 
 14 
 
 Redesdale 
 
 82 
 
 Steele . * . 
 
 59 
 
 15 
 
 Romilly 
 
 61 
 
 Tickell 
 
 54 
 
 16 
 
 RoUe 
 
 68 
 
 Montaigne - - i 
 
 60 
 
 17 
 
 Tenterden 
 
 78 
 
 Bathurst, R. 
 
 84 
 
 18 
 
 Thurlow 
 
 74 
 
 Thornton - 
 
 44 
 
 19 
 
 Vatel 
 
 53 
 
 Hawkesworth 
 
 59 
 
 20 
 
 Wilmot 
 
 83 
 
 Hazlitt - * 
 
 58 
 
 
 Total 
 
 1394 
 
 Total 
 
 1257
 
 86 
 
 LONGEVITY OF AUTHORS. 
 
 
 
 TABLE IV. 
 
 
 
 AUTHORS ON 
 
 
 AUTHORS ON 
 
 
 
 REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 NATURAL RELIGION 
 
 
 1 
 
 Name. 
 Baxter 
 
 Age. 
 76 
 
 Name. 
 Annett 
 
 Age. 
 55 
 
 2 
 
 Bellarmine 
 
 84 
 
 Bolingbroke 
 
 79 
 
 3 
 
 Butler, John 
 
 60 
 
 Cardan 
 
 75 
 
 4 
 
 Bossaet 
 
 77 
 
 Chubb 
 
 65 
 
 5 
 
 Calvin 
 
 56 
 
 Drummond, Sir W. 
 
 68 
 
 6 
 
 Chillingworth 
 
 43 
 
 Dupuis 
 
 67 
 
 7 
 
 Doddridge 
 
 54 
 
 Freret, N. 
 
 61 
 
 8 
 
 Fox, G. 
 
 67 
 
 Gibbon 
 
 58 
 
 9 
 
 Knox, John 
 
 67 
 
 Herbert, Lord 
 
 68 
 
 10 
 
 Lowth 
 
 77 
 
 Jacobi 
 
 56 
 
 11 
 
 Luther 
 
 63 
 
 Paine ' 
 
 72 
 
 12 
 
 Massillon 
 
 79 
 
 Pomponatius 
 
 63 
 
 13 
 
 Melancthon 
 
 64 
 
 Rousseau - 
 
 66 
 
 14 
 
 Paley 
 
 63 
 
 Spinoza 
 
 45 
 
 15 
 
 Porteus 
 
 77 
 
 St. Pierre 
 
 77 
 
 16 
 
 Priestley 
 
 71 
 
 Shaftesbury 
 
 42 
 
 17 
 
 Sherlock 
 
 67 
 
 Tindal 
 
 75 
 
 18 
 
 Wesley 
 
 88 
 
 Toland 
 
 53 
 
 19 
 
 Whitefield 
 
 56 
 
 Vanini - 
 
 34 
 
 20 
 
 Wycliffe 
 
 61 
 
 Volney - 
 
 66 
 
 
 Total 
 
 1350 
 
 Total 
 
 1245
 
 LONGEVITY OF AUTHORS. 
 
 87 
 
 TABLE V. 
 
 MEDICAL AUTHORS. 
 
 
 PHILOLOGISTS. 
 
 
 Name. 
 1 Brown, J. 
 
 Age. 
 54 
 
 Name. 
 Bentley 
 
 Age. 
 81 
 
 2 Coryisart 
 
 66 
 
 Burton 
 
 64 
 
 3 Cullen -> ;-* ; 
 
 78 
 
 Casaubon 
 
 55 
 
 4 Darwin 
 
 72 
 
 Cheke - 4 
 
 44 
 
 5 Fordyce 
 
 67 
 
 Hartzheim 
 
 70 
 
 6 Fothergill 
 
 69 
 
 Harman, J. 
 
 77 
 
 7 Gall 
 
 71 
 
 Heyne 
 
 84 
 
 8 Gregory, John 
 
 48 
 
 Lipsius 
 
 60 
 
 9 Harvey 
 
 81 
 
 Parr 
 
 80 
 
 10 Heberden 
 
 92 
 
 Pauw 
 
 61 
 
 11 Hoffinan 
 
 83 
 
 Pighius 
 
 84 
 
 12 Hunter, J. 
 
 65 
 
 Person 
 
 50 
 
 13 Hunter, W. 
 
 66 
 
 Raphelengius 
 
 59 
 
 14 Jenner 
 
 75 
 
 Salmatius . - 
 
 66 
 
 15 Mason Good 
 
 64 
 
 Scaliger, J. J. 
 
 69 
 
 16 Parcelsus 
 
 43 
 
 Sigonius 
 
 60 
 
 17 Pinel 
 
 84 
 
 Stephens, H. 
 
 71 
 
 18 Sydenham 
 
 66 
 
 Sylburgius 
 
 51 
 
 19 Tissot 
 
 70 
 
 Vossius - 
 
 73 
 
 20 Willis, T. 
 Total 
 
 54 
 
 Wolfiua 
 Total 
 
 64 
 1323 
 
 1368
 
 88 
 
 LONGEVITY OF AUTHORS. 
 
 TABLE VI. 
 
 
 ABTISTS. 
 
 
 MUSICAL 
 
 COMPOSERS. 
 
 1 
 
 Name. 
 Bandinelli 
 
 Age. 
 
 72 
 
 Name. 
 Arne 
 
 Age. 
 68 
 
 2 
 
 Bernini 
 
 82 
 
 Bach 
 
 66 
 
 3 
 
 Canova 
 
 65 
 
 Beethoven 
 
 57 
 
 4 
 
 Donatello 
 
 83 
 
 Burney 
 
 88 
 
 5 
 
 Flaxman 
 
 71 
 
 Bull ;, 
 
 41 
 
 6 
 
 Ghiberti 
 
 64 
 
 Cimarosa 
 
 41 
 
 7 
 
 Giotto 
 
 60 
 
 Corelli 
 
 60 
 
 8 
 
 Michael Angelo 
 
 96 
 
 Gluck * 
 
 75 
 
 9 
 
 San Sovino 
 
 91 
 
 G retry 
 
 72 
 
 10 
 
 Verocchio 
 
 56 
 
 Handel 
 
 75 
 
 11 
 
 Caracci, A. 
 
 49 
 
 Haydn 
 
 77 
 
 12 
 
 Claude 
 
 82 
 
 Kalkbrenner 
 
 51 
 
 13 
 
 David 
 
 76 
 
 Keiser 
 
 62 
 
 14 
 
 Guido 
 
 67 
 
 Martini 
 
 78 
 
 15 
 
 Raphael 
 
 37 
 
 Mozart 
 
 36 
 
 16 
 
 Reynolds 
 
 69 
 
 Paisello 
 
 75 
 
 17 
 
 Salvator Rosa 
 
 58 
 
 Piccini 
 
 71 
 
 18 
 
 Titian 
 
 96 
 
 Porpore 
 
 78 
 
 19 
 
 Veronese, Paul 
 
 56 
 
 Scarlatti 
 
 78 
 
 20 
 
 West 
 
 82 
 
 Weber 
 
 40 
 
 
 Total 
 
 1412 
 
 
 Total 1289
 
 LONGEVITY OF AUTHORS. 89 
 
 The following is the order of longevity that 
 is exhibited in the various lists, and the average 
 duration of life of the most eminent men, in 
 each pursuit. 
 
 Aggregate Average 
 years. years. 
 
 Natural Philosophers .... 1504 75 
 
 Moral Philosophers - - 1417 70 
 
 Sculptors and Painters - - 1412 70 
 
 Authors on Law and Jurisprudence - 1394 69 
 
 Medical Authors - - - 1368 68 
 
 Authors on Revealed Religion - 1350 67 
 
 Philologists - - 1323 66 
 
 Musical Composers - - 1284 64 
 
 Novelists and Miscellaneous Authors - 1257 62 
 
 Dramatists .... 1249 62 
 
 Authors on Natural Religion - - 1245 62 
 
 Poets - - - ,'* 1144 57
 
 90 LONGEVITY OF PHILOSOPHERS, 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LONGEVITY OF PHILOSOPHERS, POETS, AND 
 ASTRONOMERS. 
 
 FROM these tables it would appear, that those 
 pursuits in which imagination is largely exerted, 
 is unfavourable to longevity. We find the 
 difference between the united ages of twenty 
 natural philosophers, and that of the same num- 
 ber of poets, to be no less than three hundred 
 and sixty years ; or in other words, the average 
 of life to be about seventy-five in the one, and 
 fifty-seven in the other.
 
 POETS, AND ASTRONOMERS. 91 
 
 Natural philosophy has, then, the first place 
 in the list of studies conducive to longevity, and 
 it may therefore be inferred, to tranquillity of 
 mind, and bodily well-being: and poetry ap- 
 pears to occupy the last. Why should this be 
 so ? Is natural philosophy a less laborious 
 study, or calls for less profound reflection than 
 poetry? Or is it that the latter is rather a 
 passion than a pursuit, which is not confined to 
 the exertion of a particular faculty, but which 
 demands the exercise of all the faculties, and 
 communicates excitement to all our feelings? 
 Or is it that the throes of imaginative labour 
 are productive of greater exhaustion than those 
 of all the other faculties ? 
 
 Poetry may be said to be the natural lan- 
 guage of the religion of the heart, whose uni- 
 versal worship extends to every object that is 
 beautiful in nature or bright beyond it. But
 
 92 LONGEVITY OF PHILOSOPHERS, 
 
 this religion of the heart is the religion of 
 enthusiasm, whose inordinate devotion borders 
 on idolatry, and whose exaltation is followed by 
 the prostration of the strength and spirits. 
 
 " Poetry," as Madame De Stael has beauti- 
 fully expressed it, " is the apotheosis of senti- 
 ment." But this deification of sublime concep- 
 tions costs the priest of nature not a little for 
 the transfiguration of simple ideas into splendid 
 imagery ; no little wear and tear of mind and 
 body, no small outlay of fervid feelings. No 
 trifling expenditure of vital energy is required 
 for the translation of fine thoughts from the re- 
 gions of earth to those of heaven, and by the time 
 that worlds of invention have been exhausted 
 and new imagined, the poet has commonly 
 abridged his life to immortalize his name. The 
 old metaphysicians had an odd idea of the mental 
 faculties, and especially of imagination, but
 
 POETS, AND ASTRONOMERS. 93 
 
 which is fully as intelligible as any other psycho- 
 logical theory. They believed, we are told by 
 Hibbert, that the soul was attended by three 
 ministering principles common sense, the mo- 
 derator, whose duty it was to control the senso- 
 rium memory, the treasurer, whose office it 
 was to retain the image collected by the senses 
 and fancy, the handmaid of the mind, whose 
 business it was to recall the images which me- 
 mory retained, and to embody its conceptions 
 in various forms. But as this handmaid was 
 found to be very seldom under the control of 
 the moderator, common sense, they attributed 
 the constant communication between the heart 
 and brain to the agency of the animal spirits 
 which act through the nerves, as couriers be- 
 tween both. At one period conveying delight- 
 ful intelligence, at other times melancholy tid- 
 ings, and occasionally altogether misconceiving
 
 94 LONGEVITY OF PHILOSOPHERS, 
 
 the object of their embassy. By this means 
 both head and heart were often led astray, and 
 in this confusion of all conceived commands 
 and all concocted spirits the visions of poets, 
 the dreams of invalids, and the chimeras of 
 superstition, had their origin. The greatest 
 truths may be approached by the most fanciful 
 vehicles of thought. Be these chimeras engen- 
 dered where they may, in whatever pursuit the 
 imagination is largely exercised, enthusiasm 
 and sensibility are simultaneously developed, 
 and these are qualities whose growth cannot be 
 allowejl to exuberate without becoming unques- 
 tionably unfavourable to mental tranquillity, 
 and consequently injurious to health. 
 
 Again, we find the cool dispassionate inqui- 
 ries of moral philosophy, which are directed to 
 the nature of the human mind, and to the know- 
 ledge of truths whose tendency is to educate
 
 POETS, AND ASTRONOMERS. 95 
 
 the heart by setting bounds to its debasing pas- 
 sions, and to enlarge the mind by giving a 
 fitting scope to its ennobling faculties, are those 
 pursuits which tend to elevate, and at the same 
 time to invigorate, our thoughts, and have no 
 influence but a happy one on life. We need 
 not be surprised to find the moral historians oc- 
 cupying the second place in the list of long- 
 lived authors. 
 
 But, if the list of natural philosophers con- 
 sisted solely of astronomers, the difference 
 would be considerably greater between their 
 ages and those of the poets, for the longevity 
 of professors of this branch of science is truly 
 remarkable. In the Time's Telescope for 1833, 
 there is a list of all the eminent astronomers, 
 from Thales to those of the last century ; and 
 out of eighty-five only twenty-five had died 
 under the age of sixty, five had lived to between
 
 96 LONGEVITY OF PHILOSOPHERS, 
 
 ninety and a hundred eighteen between eighty 
 and ninety twenty-five between seventy and 
 eighty seventeen between sixty and seventy 
 ten between fifty and sixty five between forty 
 and fifty and four between thirty and forty. 
 In no other pursuit does the biography of men 
 of genius exhibit a longevity at all to be com- 
 pared to this. No other science, indeed, tends 
 so powerfully to raise the mind above those tri- 
 vial vexations and petty miseries of life, which 
 make the great amount of human evil. No 
 other science is so calculated to spiritualize our 
 faculties, to give a character of serenity to 
 wonder, which never suffers contemplation to 
 grow weary of the objects of its admiration. 
 The tyranny of passion is subdued, the feelings 
 tranquillized ; all the trivial concerns of hu- 
 manity are forgotten when the mind of the 
 astronomer revels in the magnificence of " this
 
 POETS, AND ASTRONOMERS. 97 
 
 most excellent canopy, the air ; this brave o'er- 
 hanging firmament this majestical roof, fretted 
 with golden fire ;" when he beholds worlds on 
 worlds of diversified forms, rolling in fields of 
 immeasurable space : the planets that encircle 
 the sovereign of our skies; the queen of night, 
 that walks in beauty along the starry plain of 
 heaven, and the innumerable specks, that may 
 be suns to other systems ! When he reflects 
 on the display of the Almighty power and 
 wisdom, in the immutability of the laws which 
 regulate the motions of every orb ; the wonder- 
 ful velocity of some planets, and the astonish- 
 ing precision of the complicated movements of 
 the satellites of others, his faculties are bound 
 up in astonishment and delight; but every 
 emotion of his heart is an act of silent homage 
 to the Author of this stupendous mechanism. 
 Though he advances to the threshold of the 
 VOL. i. F
 
 98 LONGEVITY OF PHILOSOPHEHS, 
 
 temple of celestial knowledge, he knows the 
 precincts which human science cannot pass; 
 reason tells him, these are my limits, " so far 
 may I go, but no farther :" but he turns not 
 away like the vain metaphysician, bewildered 
 by fruitless speculations ; for the voice of the 
 spirit, that lives and breathes within him, en- 
 courages the hope that futurity will unveil the 
 mysteries which now baffle the comprehension 
 of science and philosophy. There glitters not 
 a star above his head that is not an argument 
 for his immortality ; there is not a mystery he 
 cannot solve that is not a motive for deserving 
 it. And to the brightest luminary in the hea- 
 vens, in the confidence of that immortality, he 
 may say in the beautiful language of Campbell, 
 
 " This spirit shall return to him, 
 That gave its heavenly spark, 
 Yet think not, sun, it shall be dim 
 When thou thyself art dark !
 
 POETS, AND ASTRONOMERS. 99 
 
 No ; it shall lire again, and shine 
 In bliss unknown to beams of thine. 
 
 By him recalled to breath, 
 Who captive led captivity, 
 Who robbed the grave of victory, 
 
 And took the sting from death." 
 
 F2
 
 100 LONGEVITY OF 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LONGEVITY OF JURISTS AND DRAMATISTS. 
 
 t 
 
 THE lists of the law authors and the drama- 
 tists present a striking contrast in respect of 
 age. Here we find a difference of one hundred 
 and forty-six years. The gentlemen of the 
 gown being so much longer lived than those of 
 the sock and buskin. And here, again, the un- 
 - favourable influence of pursuits, in which ima- 
 gination is largely exercised, is to be observed. 
 Though law has occasionally to do with fiction, 
 it is only in Ireland that it has to deal with
 
 JURISTS AND DRAMATISTS. 101 
 
 fancy ; so that the gentlemen of this profession 
 have little to apprehend from the influence we 
 have just spoken of: nevertheless, the result of 
 this calculation in favour of the longevity is 
 what we certainly did not expect. Generally 
 speaking, no professional people have less salu- 
 brious countenances, or more of the sickly cast 
 of thought in their complexions, than lawyers ; 
 and if Hyga?ia were to descend upon earth 
 with the emblem of health in her right hand, in 
 quest of half-a-dozen wholesome looking vota- 
 ries, Westminster-hall is the last place the 
 daughter of Esculapius would think of visiting. 
 That famous letter of Xilander, the lawyer, 
 prefixed to the work of Plembius " De tuenda 
 valetudine togatorum, " has admirably de- 
 scribed the ills and incommodities of that sort 
 of life which the members of the legal profes- 
 sion generally lead. The work is so rare in
 
 102 LONGEVITY OF 
 
 this country, that we have been induced to 
 transcribe the greater portion of the prefatory 
 epistle. " I readily comply with your request, 
 and willingly proceed to relate those infirmities 
 and obstacles to health which seem most to fol- 
 low the bustling life we lawyers are wont to 
 lead, that you may be able to lay down for us 
 more accurate rules and modes of managing 
 our health, in the treatise you are about to 
 publish on the disorders of the members of our 
 profession. 
 
 " A country life is not only more agreeable 
 but more healthful than that spent in town, 
 in the discharge of public duties, which drag 
 peculiar diseases after them. Stomachic and 
 nephritic affections, and innumerable other ills 
 that follow in their train, are the consequences 
 of the sedentary habits of our city life. The 
 source of all our disorders is easily traced;
 
 JURISTS AND DRAMATISTS. 103 
 
 that which murders us is the constant sitting 
 that is unavoidable in our professions ; we sit 
 whole days like lame cobblers, either at home or 
 in the courts of justice; and when the meanest 
 fellow in the state is either exercising his body, 
 or unbending his mind, we must be in the 
 midst of wrangling disputations. 
 
 " Though the condition of all men too busily 
 employed is miserable, yet are they most miser- 
 able who have not leisure to mind their own 
 affairs. The torment of the constant babbling 
 in the courts is pleasantly set forth in that old 
 play, where one complains to Hercules, ' You 
 know what wretchedness I underwent when I 
 was forced to hear the lawyers plead. Had 
 you been compelled to listen to them, with all 
 your courage you wonld rather have wished 
 yourself employed in cleansing the Augean 
 stable."
 
 104 LONGEVITY OF 
 
 " It is an ugly custom we have brought into 
 use of getting into a coach every foot we have 
 to go : if we did but walk the fourth part of 
 the distance that we ride in a day, the evils of 
 our sedentary habits might be greatly obviated 
 by such exercise. But the world is come to 
 this pass, that we seem to have lost the use of 
 our feet, and doubtless you will think it neces- 
 sary to recommend our ancient method of per- 
 ambulating. 
 
 " Martial thought it madness for a hale young 
 man to walk through the town on the feet of a 
 quadruped. Another of our disadvantages is, 
 that our doors are beset continually by a crowd 
 of people. The most disputatious pettifoggers, 
 and brawlers by profession, are ever teasing us 
 with their outrageous jargon of the law. Now 
 Seneca says a man cannot be happy in the 
 midst of many people, for it fares with him as
 
 JURISTS AND DRAMATISTS. 105 
 
 it does with a tranquil lake, which is generally 
 disturbed by visitors. 
 
 " Another unseasonable annoyance of ours, is 
 to be interrupted in our meals by business ; and 
 Hippocrates condemns all study soon after 
 meals, especially in those of a bad digestion. 
 So taken up are we what with the contentions 
 of our clients, our own incessant cogitations, 
 and daily attendance in courts and chambers, 
 that we have no leisure to unbend our mind or 
 to act the part of plain simple men in private 
 life, but are obliged to personate a certain cha- 
 racter ; for our profession obliges us to be con- 
 stantly observant of our steps. But as the 
 philosopher again remarks ' those who exist 
 under a mask cannot be said to lead pleasant 
 lives, 1 for the pleasure of life consists in that 
 open, sincere simplicity of mind and manner, 
 that rather shuns than seeks observation. 
 
 F5
 
 106 LONGEVITY OF 
 
 " As for my way of living, it inclines to no 
 extreme : a spare diet is perhaps fittest for the 
 life we lead, for Celsus wrote not for us when 
 he said, that men should eat much meat 
 though he subjoins the caution provided they 
 can digest it. Though we are not great ban- 
 quetters in general, yet sometimes we give way 
 to jollity in company, and mingle our wisdom 
 with wine, without observing the nice limits of 
 sobriety. But how far these things are to be 
 allowed or avoided ; how far it may be advis- 
 able to exercise the body, to correct the evils 
 of repletion, to walk in the free air to expand 
 the chest with plentiful breathings ; how far it 
 may be necessary occasionally to change scene 
 or climate to renovate our strength and spirits 
 these are things in which we expect to be directed 
 by your wisdom. Truly, it is most reasonable 
 to advise us to take air and exercise, and to re-
 
 JURISTS AND DRAMATISTS. 107 
 
 create our minds : holidays were set apart by 
 public authority for that purpose. But we are 
 like slaves, who have no remission from labour; 
 on some festivals, indeed, we alternate our toil, 
 but we do not lay it aside ; we must attend to 
 business in some shape or other, whether in 
 listening to depositions abroad, or in giving 
 opinions at home ; we are like the persons de- 
 scribed by Euripides we are the slaves of the 
 public, and our lives are in the hands of the 
 people. 
 
 " Let us profit by the melancholy example of 
 those who have tarried too long on the bench, 
 or at the bar ; and as years gain on us let us 
 contract our toils, and secure an honest retreat 
 for our old age, for its latter days are the 
 lawyer's only holidays. In proper time, let us 
 bid our long farewell to the bench and to the 
 court.
 
 108 LONGEVITY OF 
 
 " The first and middle terms of existence we 
 sacrifice to the public why should we not be- 
 stow the latter on ourselves? Let us take in 
 due time the counsel of the Roman: Pack up 
 our awls at the approach of old age and hay- 
 ing lived in straits the greater portion of our 
 days, let us die in harbour." 
 
 Such is the Sieur Xilander's account of the 
 toils of the profession of which he was a distin- 
 guished member. But with all its labours, we 
 find that our list of eminent lawyers indicates 
 a length of life considerably greater than that 
 of the imaginative pursuits of the poets, dra- 
 matists, novelists, and musical composers. 
 
 The distinction has been made between dra- 
 matists and poets, because the most numerous 
 instances of advanced age are found amongst 
 the former. The toils of the dramatist and 
 those of the general poet are of a very different
 
 JURISTS AND DRAMATISTS. 109 
 
 character ; every dramatist, indeed, must be a 
 poet, but many of the greatest poets have 
 proved very indifferent dramatists. The list of 
 the latter gives an amount of one hundred and 
 five years more than the poets, and that of the 
 dramatists two hundred and fifty-five years less 
 than the natural philosophers. Though the dif- 
 ficulty of succeeding in this branch of poetry is 
 infinitely greater than in any other, and imagi- 
 nation in no small degree is essential to its suc- 
 cessful cultivation, it is still to a happy combi- 
 nation of other qualities, and the exercise of 
 other and more sober faculties, that this art is 
 indebted for success. The business of the dra- 
 matist is to realize the images of fancy, to 
 clothe the airy conceptions of poetry in the garb 
 of real life. 
 
 The aim of tragedy is to give breath and 
 animation to exalted sentiments, to bring the
 
 110 LONGEVITY OF 
 
 dim shadows of imagination into being, and 
 give to legendary exploit* the vivid character 
 of actual events. The office of Comedy, on the 
 other hand, is to catch the living manners as 
 they rise, to place the peculiarities of national 
 character in their strongest light, to make the 
 follies of the time the food of wit, and in the 
 correction of malevolent absurdity to make ri- 
 dicule do that for which reason may not be ap- 
 pealed to. In a word, to mingle mirth with 
 morals, " to hold the mirror up to nature, to 
 show virtue her own image, vice her own defor- 
 mity, the very age and body of the time, its 
 form and pressure." 
 
 That the labours of dramatic composition 
 have not the same depressing influence on the 
 energies of life as those of the other branches of 
 poetry, may be inferred from the astonishing 
 fertility of dramatic invention, and likewise of
 
 JURISTS AND DRAMATISTS. Ill 
 
 the longevity of many of its authors. Lope de 
 Vega is said to have written eighteen hundred 
 pieces for the theatre ; forty-seven quarto vo- 
 lumes of his works are extant, twenty-five of 
 which are composed of dramas : he died of 
 hypochondria in his seventy-third year; and 
 little is it to be wondered at, that the literary 
 malady should have closed the career of so 
 voluminous an author. Goldoni wrote two 
 hundred plays, which are published in thirty- 
 one octav,o volumes. Had Shakspeare attained 
 the age of Goldoni, he would probably have 
 been as prolific an author ; thirty-seven dramas 
 have immortalized his short career, and these 
 productions have to boast of a fate which those 
 of no other dramatist, ancient or modern, ever 
 met with. After an interval of two hundred 
 years, five-and-twenty of his pieces still keep 
 possession of the stage.
 
 112 LONGEVITY OF MEDICAL AUTHORS, 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 LONGEVITY OF MEDICAL AUTHORS, AND 
 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 
 
 TH E amount of the united ages of the medical 
 authors exceeds that of the novelists and es- 
 sayists by one hundred and twelve years ; and 
 here again, the authors " of imagination all 
 compact" are found very nearly at the bottom 
 of the list, while those, into whose pursuits 
 imagination little enters, in point of longevity 
 rank high above them. It may be truly 
 said, without any hyperbole, that every pur- 
 suit which ennobles the mind, has a tendency to
 
 AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 113 
 
 invigorate the body, and by its tranquillizing 
 influence, to add to the duration of life. 
 
 That study which carries the contemplation 
 of its followers to the highest regions of philo- 
 sophy, we have already seen is the pursuit, of 
 all others, the most conducive to longevity. 
 But the mechanism of the heavens is only more 
 wonderful than that of the human form, because 
 the magnitude of the scale on which the move- 
 ments of that mechanism are carried on, re- 
 quire the greatest effort which the mind is 
 capable of making, even imperfectly to con- 
 ceive. But what is there more wonderful in the 
 laws which regulate the motions of innumerable 
 worlds, than that principle of life which ani- 
 mates the dust of which one human being is 
 compounded ? What is there more stupendous 
 in the idea of the power that gives precision, 
 velocity, and effulgence to the swiftest and the
 
 ] 14 LONGEVITY OF MEDICAL AUTHORS, 
 
 brightest of those orbs, than in the concep- 
 tion of that power, which bestows the spirit of 
 vitality and the attribute of reason on man. 
 Infinite wisdom is only differently displayed ; it 
 matters not how, whether in the revolutions of 
 the planets, or the circulation of the blood, in 
 the transmission of solar light and heat, or in 
 the mechanism of the eye, or the sensibility of 
 the nerves, the inquiring mind is ultimately 
 carried to the same creative power. But above 
 all philosophers, to the medical observer what a 
 miracle of wisdom is the formation of the 
 human body, and the wonderful faculties su- 
 peradded to its organization ! " What a piece 
 of work is man ! How noble in reason ! how 
 infinite in faculties ! In form and moving how 
 express and admirable ! In action, how like 
 an angel ! in apprehension, how like a God ! 
 The beauty of the world ! The paragon of
 
 AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 115 
 
 animals !" In a word, the tendency of the 
 pursuits of the physician is to enlarge his un- 
 derstanding, and to enlighten his views on every 
 subject to which they are directed. 
 
 The list of miscellaneous writers is equally 
 divided between the novelist and essayist. The 
 former, whom we may consider as the regular 
 practitioners of literature appear, to enjoy a 
 greater length of days than their periodical 
 brethren who cannot boast the voluminous dig- 
 nity of the acknowledged novelist. The result, 
 however, shows that the compulsory toil of 
 periodical composition has a greater influence 
 on health than voluntary labours to a far 
 greater amount. This opinion is corroborated 
 by an observation of Dr. Johnson, no mean 
 authority on any subject connected with literary 
 history. " He that condemns himself to com- 
 pose on a stated day, will often bring to his
 
 116 LONGEVITY OF MEDICAL AUTHOKS, 
 
 task an attention dissipated, a memory embar- 
 rassed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body 
 languishing with disease ; he will labour on a 
 barren topic till it is too late to change it ; for in 
 the ardor of invention, his thoughts become dif- 
 fused into a wild exuberance which the pressing 
 hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to 
 examine or reduce." There is, indeed, no labour 
 more destructive to health, than that of periodical 
 literature, and in no species of mental applica- 
 tion, or even of manual employment, is the 
 wear and tear of mind and body so early and so 
 severely felt. The readers of those light arti- 
 cles which appear to cost so little labour in the 
 various literary publications of the day, are 
 little aware how many constitutions are broken 
 down in the service of their literary taste. 
 
 But with the novelist, it is far different ; they 
 have their attention devoted, perhaps for months,
 
 AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 117 
 
 to one continued subject, and that subject 
 neither dry nor disagreeable. They have no 
 laborious references to make to other books, 
 they have to burthen their memories with no 
 
 authorities for their opinions, nor to trouble 
 
 % 
 their brain with the connexion of any lengthened 
 
 chain of ratiocination. They have but to knock 
 at the door of their imagination to call forth 
 its phantasies, and if the power of genius is 
 present, " to collect, combine, amplify, and 
 animate" the ideas these phantasies suggest-: 
 which, after all, are the creations of that faculty 
 " without which judgment is cold, and know- 
 ledge is inert. 11 To weave these phantasies into 
 fiction, to call new worlds of imaginary being 
 into existence, to endow an Anastasius or a 
 Corinne with thoughts that breathe and words 
 that burn, to picture a Rebecca, gazing from 
 her dizzy casement on the tide of battle rolling
 
 118 LONGEVITY OF MEDICAL AUTHORS, 
 
 beneath the castle walls, to bring the very spot 
 to the mind's eye, where " death has broken 
 the strong man's spear, and overtaken the speed 
 of his war-horse :" to invest the soldier of the 
 cross, in his panoply of steel ; like Cervantes, 
 to carry the exaltation of knight-errantry to 
 the extremest very of credible absurdity, to 
 array it against windmills ; to couch the lance 
 of the cavalier, and send his gallant steed against 
 an army of soldadoes, or a flock of sheep, or to 
 give the shadowy forms of mental entrancement 
 a spiritualized being, made up of beauty 
 and romance, or of baleful passions a Flora 
 M'lvor or a haggard Elspeth : this is the 
 business of the novelist, and it must be allowed 
 no unpleasing occupation is it. 
 
 So far as the labour we delight in physics 
 pain, pleasant unquestionably it is, but light 
 and amusing as it may seem, still is it labo- 
 rious.
 
 AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 11Q 
 
 The author of the Ramoler has justly ob- 
 served, it is no unpleasjng employment " to 
 write when one sentiment readily produces an- 
 other, and both ideas and expression present 
 themselves at the first summons ; but such hap- 
 piness the greatest genius does not always at- 
 tain, and common writers know it only to such 
 a degree as to credit its possibility." In fact, 
 there is no man, however great his powers, to 
 whom extensive composition is not a serious 
 labour ; and in fiction, those productions, like 
 Sterne's, which seem to be the very outpour- 
 ings of the mind, are generally those which cost 
 the greatest effort. 
 
 The most accurate observer of nature, is 
 generally the most painful thinker ; the deepest 
 thinker is seldom the best talker ; and he whose 
 memory draws least on his own imagination, 
 (paradoxical as it may seem,) is often the most
 
 120 LONGEVITY OF MEDICAL AUTHORS, 
 
 fluent writer. " Those animals," says Bacon, 
 " which are the swiftest in the course are nim- 
 blest in the turn." 
 
 But the great evil of every department of 
 literature which deals in fiction, is the habit 
 the imagination acquires of domineering over 
 sober judgment. 
 
 " In time,"" says the great moralist, " when 
 some particular train of ideas has fixed the 
 attention, all other intellectual gratifications are 
 rejected, the mind, in weariness or leisure, re- 
 curs constantly to the favourite conception, and 
 feasts on the luscious falsehood, whenever she is 
 offended with the bitterness of truth. By de- 
 grees the reign of fancy is confirmed. She 
 grows first imperious, and in time despotic. 
 Then fiction begins to operate as reality, false 
 opinions fasten on the mind, and life passes in 
 dreams of rapture or anguish."
 
 AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 121 
 
 Such is the progress, but its origin is in the 
 infatuation of the pursuits which draws him 
 into labour beyond his strength, and causes a 
 prolonged application to composition, because 
 the interest of the subject renders the mind in- 
 sensible to fatigue. Scott seldom exceeded fif- 
 teen pages a day, but even this for a continuance 
 was a toilsome task, that would have broken 
 down the health of any other constitution at a 
 much earlier period. Byron, in his journal, 
 says he wrote an entire poem, and one of con- 
 siderable length, in four days, to banish the 
 dreadful impression of a dream an exertion of 
 mind and body which appears almost incredible. 
 
 Pope boasts in one of his letters of having 
 finished fifty lines of his " Homer" in one day; 
 and it would appear to be the largest number 
 he had accomplished. 
 
 Cowper, however, in his blank verse trans- 
 
 VOL. i. G
 
 122 LONGEVITY OF MEDICAL AUTHORS, 
 
 lation of the same author, for some time was in 
 the habit of doing sixty lines a day ; and even 
 in his last illness, of revising one hundred lines 
 daily. But of all literary labour that of John- 
 son appears the most stupendous. " In seven 
 years," to use his own language, " he sailed a 
 long and painful voyage round the world of the 
 English language," and in that brief term 
 produced his dictionary. The similar French 
 performance occupied forty academicians nearly 
 as many years. 
 
 During the period that Johnson was thus 
 employed, he found leisure to produce his 
 tragedy, to complete the "Rambler," the "Va- 
 nity of Human Wishes," and several minor 
 performances. At the later period, he speaks 
 of having written forty-eight octavo pages of 
 the " Life of Savage" in one day, and a part 
 of the night.
 
 AXD MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 123 
 
 Such labours as these, if they do not shorten 
 life, are calculated to make it wretched, for 
 hypochondria invariably follows close upon 
 them.
 
 124 LONGEVITY OF 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 LONGEVITY OF POLEMICAL AUTHORS PHILO- 
 LOGISTS. 
 
 IN the list of polemical authors we find the 
 longevity of those of fixed opinions on the 
 subject of religion greater, by a hundred and 
 five years, than that of authors of unsettled 
 sentiments on this important inquiry after truth. 
 The only wonder is, that the ages of the former 
 have not furnished a still larger amount, when 
 the different effects on health and life are taken 
 into account, of certainty of opinion on the, 
 most important of all subjects : of tranquillity
 
 POLEMICAL AUTHORS. 
 
 and peace of mind on the one hand ; and on 
 the other, of inquiries that present difficulties, 
 doubts, or disbelief of mental anxiety, and of 
 the insecurity of the virtue of those whose sole 
 dependance is on worldly honour, whose only 
 guidance is the philosophy of men as fallible as 
 themselves. 
 
 The list of the philologists exhibits very 
 little difference from that of the divines in the 
 amount of the united ages of each. Though 
 many of the former have been devoted solely to 
 scholastic pursuits, these pursuits to a great 
 extent are necessary to qualify the latter for 
 their profession. But seclusion from the world, 
 and sedentary habits, can alone enable the phi- 
 lologist to make his memory the store-house of 
 the erudition of past ages, or furnish the neces- 
 sary materials for that vast pyramid of classical 
 erudition, which is based on a catacomb of an-
 
 126 LONGEVITY OF 
 
 cient learning, and has its apex in a cloud that 
 sheds no rain on the arid soil beneath it. 
 
 The more we contemplate so wonderful a 
 structure, the greater must be our disappoint- 
 ment if we fail to discover its utility, and the 
 larger the surface over which its shadows are 
 projected, the more must be questioned the ad- 
 vantage of the erroneous expenditure of time 
 and labour that was necessary for the erection 
 of such a pile. If Cobbett should ever deign to 
 peruse these volumes, he will pardon our meta- 
 phor for the sake of its application ; but none 
 can be more sensible of the misfortune of en- 
 titling an opinion of the inutility of any branch 
 of learning to the approbation of that gentle- 
 man than we are ; but, nevertheless, we are 
 inclined to question the advantage of a whole 
 life's devotion to the study of the dead lan- 
 guages.
 
 POLEMICAL AUTHORS. 127 
 
 What good to science, or to society, has ac- 
 crued from Parr's profound knowledge of the 
 dialects of Greece ? What original works, even 
 on the subject of his own pursuit, have issued 
 from his pen ? A few tracts and sermons, and 
 a new edition of " Bellendenus," are his only 
 title to the remembrance of the next age. 
 
 Languages are but the avenues to learning, 
 and he who devotes his attention to the forma- 
 tion of the pebbles that lay along the road, 
 will have little leisure for the consideration of 
 more important objects, whose beauty or utility 
 arrest the attention of the general observer. 
 
 We have been carried away from the sub- 
 ject of the effects of sedentary habits to 
 which the pursuits that are carried on in clois- 
 ters of ancient learning are apt to lead ; but 
 in truth, there remained little to be said on the 
 subject. If such habits appear less injurious
 
 128 LONGEVITY OF POLEMICAL AUTHORS. 
 
 to health in this branch of study than might 
 have been expected, it is only because memory 
 and not imagination, industry and not enthu- 
 siasm, have to do with the pursuits of the 
 philologist.
 
 ARTISTS. 129 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 LONGEVITY OF MUSICAL COMPOSERS, SCULPTORS, 
 AND PAINTERS. 
 
 FINALLY, we have to observe the extraordinary 
 difference in the longevity of the musical com 
 posers, and that of the artists. We find the 
 amount of life in the list of the sculptors and 
 painters larger, by one hundred and twenty-eight 
 years, than in that of the votaries of Euterpe. 
 
 Music is to sensibility what language is to 
 poetry, the mode of expressing enthusiastic sen- 
 timents, and exciting agreeable sensations. The 
 
 G5
 
 130 LONGEVITY OF MUSICAL 
 
 more imagination the composer is able to put 
 into his music, the more powerfully he appeals 
 to the feelings. Sensibility is the soul of mu- 
 sic, and pathos its most powerful attribute. 
 
 Pythagoras imagined that music was the soul 
 of life itself, or that harmony was the sum total 
 of the faculties, and the necessary result of the 
 concert of these faculties, and of the bodil 
 functions. 
 
 Musical composition, then, demands ext 
 ordinary sensibility, an enthusiastic imagination, 
 an instinctive taste rather than deep thought. 
 The same qualities differently directed make 
 the poet. Is it, then, to be wondered at, that 
 we should find the poets and the musical com- 
 posers considerably shorter lived than the fol- 
 lowers of all other learned or scientific pursuits, 
 whose sensibility is not exercised by their 
 studies, whose imaginations are not wearied by
 
 COMPOSERS, SCULPTORS, &C. 131 
 
 excessive application and enthusiasm ? The term 
 " genus irritabile " deserves to be transferred 
 from the poetical to the musical tribe ; for we 
 take it that an enraged musician is a much 
 more common spectacle than an irritated bard, 
 and infinitely more rabid in his choler. 
 
 Generally speaking, musicians are the most 
 intolerant of men to one another, the most cap- 
 tious, the best humoured when flattered, and 
 the worst tempered at all other times. Music, 
 like laudanum, appears to soothe the senses 
 when used in moderation, but the continual 
 employment of either flurries and excites the 
 faculties, and often renders the best natured 
 men in the world, petulant, irritable, and 
 violent. 
 
 In the list of artists the sculptors and painters 
 have been placed apart for the purpose of show-
 
 132 LONGEVITY OF MUSICAL 
 
 ing the greater longevity of the former. The 
 united ages of both exceed the poet's amount 
 of life by no less than three hundred and thirty- 
 two years an ample indication of the difference 
 of the influence of the imaginative and the imi- 
 tative art on health. Many, we are aware, 
 think that imagination enters as largely into the 
 pursuits of painting as into poetry. But, if 
 such were the case, sculpture might indulge in 
 the vagaries and chimeras of fancy without 
 being obliged to have recourse to the centaurs 
 and satyrs of poetry for its monsters, and paint- 
 ing might not have had to borrow its most beau- 
 tiful subjects from the fervid description of Ma- 
 donnas and Magdalens in the monkish records 
 of the middle ages. It has been truly observed 
 by an intelligent traveller, that " what the an- 
 cient poets fancied in verse, the sculptors formed
 
 COMPOSERS, SCULPTORS, &C. 133 
 
 in marble ; what the priests invented afterwards 
 in their cells, the painters have perpetuated on 
 canvass. And thus the poetic fiction and the 
 sacerdotal miracle the ancient fable and the 
 modern legend, by the magic influence of the 
 chisel and the pencil, are handed down from age 
 to age." A vivid perception of all that is sub- 
 lime and beautiful in imagination is essential to 
 the artist ; but it does not follow because Ho- 
 garth had an excellent perception of the ridi- 
 culous, that nature had endowed him with the 
 comic talent of a Liston. v The elements of 
 painting are said to be, invention, design, co^ 
 louring, and disposition. But, if invention im- 
 plies here original creative power, independent 
 of the imagery of nature and poetry, or of 
 events detailed in history, the term is erroneously 
 applied. The sublimest effort of pictorial art 
 that can be adduced in favour of the received
 
 134 LONGEVITY OF MUSICAL 
 
 opinion of the inventive genius of painting, is 
 that wonderful picture of the Last Judgment, 
 by Michael Angelo. But the majesty and 
 glory, the terror and despair, that are depicted 
 in it, are not invented, but embodied. The ori- 
 ginal of each outline is in the Sacred History, 
 and our wonder is not more at the execution of 
 such a design than at the boldness of the ge- 
 nius that had the courage to undertake it. 
 Imagination is the power which the artist is 
 least necessitated to call into action ; judgment 
 is the master excellence which is requisite to re- 
 gulate and direct the minor qualities that are 
 given by nature, or acquired by experience. 
 " Good sense and experience," says Burke, 
 " acting together, find out what is fit to be done 
 in every work of art. 11 Painting, in a word, is 
 the adaption of poetry to the eye, the concen- 
 tration of natural imagery the skilful com-
 
 COMPOSERS, SCULPTORS, &C. 135 
 
 bination, in a limited space, of the idea of in- 
 finity, with the perception of objects that are 
 visible at a glance. Many of the ancient painters, 
 it is true, were tolerable poets. Michael An- 
 gelo and Salvator Rosa were good ones ; but it 
 does not follow that imagination is essential to 
 the production of art. Some of the most emi- 
 nent lawyers wrote excellent verses. Sir Thomas 
 More, Jones, Blackstone, Erskine, and Curran, 
 had considerable talents for poetry. But poetry 
 has very little to do with law ; neither has 
 it with chemistry, and yet Sir Humphry 
 Davy has left effusions of this kind behind 
 him which would not be discreditable to any 
 bard. 
 
 We may conclude with Goethe, "there is 
 a difference between the art of painting and 
 that of writing ; their bases may touch each 
 other, but their summits are distinct and sepa-
 
 136 LONGEVITY, &C. 
 
 rate." And from the lists that have been no- 
 ticed of the painters and poets, we have seen 
 there is a wide difference between the influence 
 of an imitative art and an imaginative pursuit, 
 on health.
 
 THE LAST MOMENTS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 137 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE LAST MOMENTS OF MEN OF GENIUS* 
 
 THOUGH to the moralist it 'is of much less im- 
 portance how a man dies than how he lives, it 
 is nevertheless a matter of more than curiosity 
 to inquire how far the words and actions, the 
 theoretical philosophy and the practical conduct 
 of men correspond in their last moments. In 
 such moments, what influence has mental culti- 
 vation on the conduct of individuals? Or, is 
 there indeed any perceptible difference between 
 the bearing of the cultivated and uncultivated
 
 138 THE LAST MOMENTS 
 
 mind in the last scene of all? Generally 
 speaking, the influence of literature and science 
 over the mind and the demeanor of men, is at 
 no period displayed to such advantage as at that 
 of the close of life. What medical man has at- 
 tended at the death-bed of the scholar, or the 
 studious man, and has not found death divested 
 of half its terrors by the dignified composure 
 of the sufferer, and his state one of peace and 
 serenity, compared with the abject condition of 
 the unenlightened mind in the same extremity ? 
 Those, perhaps, who relinquish life with the 
 most reluctance, paradoxical as it may appear 
 to be, are to be found in the most opposite 
 grades of society those in the very highest and 
 lowest walks of life. In different countries, 
 likewise, it is singular in what different degrees 
 people are influenced by the fear of eternity, 
 and in what different ways the pomp of death,
 
 OF MEN OF GENIUS. 139 
 
 the peculiar mode of sepulture, reasonable 
 views of religion, and terrifying superstitions 
 affect the people of particular countries. The 
 Irish, who are certainly not deficient in physical 
 courage, support bodily suffering, and encounter 
 death, with less fortitude than the people of this 
 country. A German entertains his fate, in his 
 dying moments, more like a philosopher than 
 a Frenchman. And, of all places in the 
 world, the capital of Turkey is it, where we 
 have seen death present the greatest terrors, 
 and where life has been most unwillingly re- 
 signed. The Arabs, on the other hand, pro- 
 fessing the same religion as the Turks, differ 
 from them wholly in this respect, and meet 
 death with greater indifference than the humbler 
 classes of any other country, Mahomedan or 
 Christian. It is truly surprising with what 
 apathy an Arab, in extremity, will lay him down
 
 140 THE LAST MOMENTS OF 
 
 to die, and with what pertinacity the Turk 
 will cling to life with what abject importunity 
 he will solicit the physician to save and pre- 
 serve him. 
 
 In various epidemics in the East, we have 
 had occasion to observe the striking difference 
 in the conduct of both in their last moments, 
 and especially in the expedition of Ibrahim 
 Pasha to the Morea, when hundreds were dying 
 daily in the camp at Suda. There the haughty 
 Moslem went to the society of his celestial 
 houries like a miserable slave, while the good- 
 humoured Arab went like a hero to his long 
 last home. The difference in their moral qua- 
 lities, and the mental superiority of the Egyp- 
 tian over the Turk, made all the distinction. 
 
 The result of the observation of many a 
 closing scene in various climes, leads to the 
 conclusion that death is envisaged by those
 
 MEN OF GENIUS. 141 
 
 with the least horror, whose lives have been 
 least influenced by superstition or fanaticism, 
 as well as by those who have cultivated litera- 
 ture and science with the most ardour. " Of 
 the great number," says Sir Henry Halford, 
 in his Essay on Death, " to whom it has been 
 my painful professional duty to have adminis- 
 tered in the last hours of their lives, I have 
 sometimes felt surprised that so few have 
 appeared reluctant to go to " the undiscovered 
 country, from whose bourne no traveller returns."" 
 And probably, were it not for the adven- 
 titious terrors which are given to death for 
 all the frightful paraphernalia of the darkened 
 chamber, the hideous vesture of the corpse, 
 the lugubrious visages of ' the funeral per- 
 formers,' the solemn mutes who ' mimic sorrow 
 when the heart's not sad,' and all the frightful 
 ' pomp and circumstance' of death the sable
 
 142 THE LAST MOMENTS OF 
 
 pall, the waving plumes; were it not for these, 
 and the revolting custom of heightening the 
 horrors of sepulture, the formal mode of doing 
 violence to the feelings of the friends who stand 
 over the gravej death might be divested of half 
 its terrors, and its approach even hailed as 
 a blessing by the majority of mankind by 
 those, at least, who are weary of the world, 
 whatever portion of it they may be. Is it not 
 Johnson who has said, there is probably more 
 pain in passing from youth to age, than from 
 age to eternity ? 
 
 Professor Hufeland, whose observations on 
 this subject are worth all the essays that have 
 lately obtained a temporary notoriety, and that 
 too without any classical clap-traps or shreds 
 and patches of ancient scholarship, has well 
 observed in his work on longevity, " that many 
 fear death less than the operation of dying.
 
 MEN OF GENIUS. 143 
 
 People (he says) form the most singular con- 
 ception of the last struggle, the separation of 
 the soul from the body, and the like. But this 
 is all void of foundation. No man certainly 
 ever felt what death is ; and as insensibly as we 
 enter into life, equally insensible do we leave it. 
 The beginning and the end are here united. 
 My proofs are as follows. First, man can have 
 no sensation of dying ; for, to die, means nothing 
 more than to lose the vital power, and it is the 
 vital power which is the medium of commu- 
 nication between the soul and body. In pro- 
 portion as the vital power decreases, we lose 
 the power of sensation and of consciousness ; 
 and we cannot lose life without at the same 
 time, or rather before, losing our vital sensa- 
 tion, which requires the assistance of the ten- 
 derest organs. We are taught also by expe- 
 rience, that all those who ever passed through
 
 144 THE LAST MOMENTS OF 
 
 the first stage of death, and were again brought 
 to life, unanimously asserted that they felt 
 nothing of dying, but sunk at once into a state 
 of insensibility." 
 
 " Let us not be led into a mistake by the con- 
 vulsive throbs, the rattling in the throat, and 
 the apparent pangs of death, which are ex- 
 hibited by many persons when in a dying state. 
 These symptoms are painful only to the spec- 
 tators, and not to the dying, who are not 
 sensible of them. The case here is the same 
 as if one, from the dreadful contortions of a 
 person in an epileptic fit, should form a con- 
 clusion respecting his internal feelings : from 
 what affects us so much, he suffers nothing. 1 ' 
 
 k< Let one always consider life, as it really is, 
 a mean state, which is not an object itself, but 
 a medium for obtaining an object, as the multi- 
 farious imperfections of it sufficiently prove;
 
 MEN OF GENIUS. 145 
 
 as a period of trial and preparation, a frag- 
 ment of existence, through which we are to 
 be fitted for, and transmitted to, other period?. 
 Can the idea, then, of really making this tran- 
 sition of ascending to another from this mean 
 state, this doubtful problematical existence, 
 which never affords complete satisfaction, ever 
 excite terror? With courage and confidence 
 we may, therefore, resign ourselves to the will 
 of that Supreme Being, who, without our con- 
 sent, placed us upon this sublunary theatre, 
 and give up to his management the future 
 direction of our fate." 
 
 " Remembrance of the past, of that circle of 
 friends who were ' nearest and always will be 
 dearest to our hearts, and who, as it were, now 
 smile to us with a friendly look of invitation 
 from that distant country beyond the grave, 
 
 VOL. i. H
 
 THE LAST MOMENTS OF 
 
 will also tend very much to allay the fear of 
 death." 
 
 There is one point connected with this sub- 
 ject the brightening up of the mind previously 
 to dissolution ; or, to use the common expres- 
 sion, "the lightness before death," on which 
 a few words remain to be said. The notion 
 that dying people were favoured beyond others 
 with a spiritualized conception of things not 
 only relating to time, but likewise to eternity, 
 was familiar to the ancients, and was probably 
 lx>rrowed by the Jews from the Egyptians, 
 amongst whose descendants the words and 
 wishes of a dying man are still regarded as 
 manifestations of a spirit of wisdom that has 
 risen superior to the weaknesses and passions 
 of humanity. The doctrine, however, shared 
 the fate of all similar opinions that are speciou* 
 without being solid, and entertaining v.ithout
 
 MEN OF GENIUS. 147 
 
 being true: it was forgotten till revived by 
 Aretaeus ; and from his time to that of Sir H. 
 Halford, millions of people were born and 
 buried, and no indications of a prophetic spirit 
 exhibited by the dying, or recorded of them, 
 till the learned baronet produced his Essay on 
 the subject. In truth, this lighting up of the 
 mind amounts to nothing more than a plea- 
 surably excited condition of the mental facul- 
 ties, following perhaps a state of previous 
 torpor, and continuing a few hours, or often- 
 times moments, before dissolution. This rousing 
 up of the mind is probably produced by the 
 stimulus of dark venous blood circulating 
 through the arterial vessels of the brain, in 
 consequence of the imperfect oxygenation of 
 the blood in the lungs, whose delicate air-cells 
 become impeded by the deposition of mucus 
 on the surface, which there is not sufficient 
 
 H 2
 
 148 THE LAST MOMENTS OF 
 
 energy in the absorbents to remove, and hence 
 arises the rattling in the throat which commonly 
 precedes death.* 
 
 The effect of this new stimulus of dark- 
 coloured blood in the arterial vessels, appears 
 strongly to resemble the exhilarating effects of 
 opium, inasmuch as physical pain is lulled, the 
 sensations soothed, and the imagination exalted. 
 Long-forgotten pleasures are recalled, old fa- 
 miliar faces are seen in the mind's eye, and 
 well-remembered friends are communed with, 
 and the imaginative power of giving a real 
 presence to the shadowy reproductions of me- 
 mory is busily employed, and a sort of delirium, 
 or rather of mental exaltation, is the conse- 
 
 * In the Quarterly Review for April, the explanation of 
 the phenomena here glanced at is sensibly and intelligibly 
 given, and may be referred to with advantage for larger in- 
 formation on this subject.
 
 MEN OF GENIUS. HT 149 
 
 quence, in which a rapid succession of ideas, 
 in most instances apparently of an agreeable 
 nature, pass through the mind, and the sense 
 of bodily pain to all appearance is wholly over- 
 powered. These phenomena were, perhaps, 
 never more strikingly exhibited than in the case 
 of the late Mr. Salt. The last three or four 
 days of his life his mind seemed to have re- 
 gained all its former activity. He spoke in 
 various languages to his attendants, some of 
 which, as the Amharic, he had not used for 
 many years; he composed some verses that 
 referred to his previous sufferings, and repeated 
 them with great energy to the friend who 
 accompanied him. The prophetic spirit which 
 in some degree is supposed, by the authors we 
 have alluded to, to be attained by the dying, 
 was likewise aimed at, though not attained in 
 this instance for poor Salt frequently predicted
 
 150 
 
 THE LAST MOMENTS OF 
 
 that he would die on a Thursday, but the 
 prediction was not accomplished. 
 
 Some of the following, brief accounts of the 
 closing scene of men of genius, may tend to 
 illustrate the preceding observations, and to 
 show how far a predominant passion or favourite 
 pursuit may influence the mind even at the 
 latest hour of life. In nearly every instance, 
 "the ruling passion strong in death" is found 
 to be displayed. 
 
 Rousseau, when dying, ordered his attend- 
 ants to place him before the window, that he 
 might once more behold his garden, and bid 
 adieu to nature. 
 
 Addison's dying speech to his son-in-law was 
 characteristic enough of the man, who was 
 accustomed to inveigh against the follies of 
 mankind, though not altogether free from some 
 of the frailties he denounced. " Behold," said
 
 MKN OF GENIUS. 151 
 
 he to the dissolute young nobleman, " with 
 what tranquillity a Christian can die !" 
 
 lloscommon uttered at the moment he ex- 
 pired, two lines of his own version of " Dies 
 irse." 
 
 Haller died feeling his pulse, and when he 
 found it almost gone, turning to his brother 
 physician, said, " My friend, the artery ceases 
 to beat," and died. 
 
 Petrarch was found dead in his library, 
 leaning on a book. 
 
 Bead died in the act of dictating. 
 
 Herder closed his career writing an ode to 
 the Deity, his pen on the last line. 
 
 Waller died repeating some lines of Virgil. 
 
 Metastasio, who would never suffer the word 
 death to be uttered in his presence, at last 
 so far triumphed over his fears, that, after re- 
 ceiving the last rites of religion, in his enthu-
 
 152 THE LAST MOMENTS OF 
 
 siasm he burst forth into a stanza of religious 
 poetry. 
 
 Lucan died reciting some verses of his own 
 Pharsalia. 
 
 Alfieri, the day before he died, was per- 
 suaded to see a priest ; and when he came, he 
 said to him with great affability, " Have the 
 kindness to look in to-morrow I trust death will 
 wait four-and-twenty hours." 
 
 Napoleon, when dying, and in the act of 
 speaking to the clergyman, reproved his scep- 
 tical physician for smiling, in these words 
 " You are above those weaknesses, but what 
 can I do ? I am neither a philosopher nor a 
 physician ; I believe in God, and am of the re- 
 ligion of my father. It is not every one who 
 can be an atheist." The last words he uttered 
 
 Head Army evinced clearly enough 
 
 what sort of visions were passing over his mind 
 at the moment of dissolution.
 
 
 MEN OF GENIUS. 153 
 
 Tasso's dying request to Cardinal Cynthia 
 was indicative of the gloom which haunted him 
 through life ; he had but one favour, he said, 
 to request of him, which was, that he would 
 collect his works, and commit them to the 
 flames, especially his Jerusalem Delivered. 
 
 Leibnitz was found dead in his chamber, with 
 a book in his hand. 
 
 Clarendon's pen dropped from his fingers 
 when he was seized with the palsy, which ter- 
 minated his life. 
 
 Chaucer died ballad making. His last pro- 
 duction he entitled, "A Ballad, made by Geoffry 
 Chaucer on his death-bed, lying in great 
 anguish." 
 
 Barthelemy was seized with death while read- 
 ing his favourite Horace. 
 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller's vanity was displayed 
 in his last moments. Pope, who visited him
 
 154 THE LAST MOMENTS OF 
 
 two days before he died, says, he never saw a 
 scene of so much vanity in his life ; he was 
 sitting up in his bed, contemplating the plan he 
 was making for his own monument. 
 
 Wycherly, when dying, had his young wife 
 brought to his bed-side, and having taken her 
 hand in a very solemn manner, said, he had but 
 one request to make of her, and that was, that 
 she would never marry an old man again. 
 There is every reason to believe, though it is 
 not stated in the account, that so reasonable a 
 request could not be denied at such a moment. 
 
 " Bolingbroke," says Spence, " in his last ill- 
 ness desired to be brought to the table where we 
 were sitting at dinner ; his appearance was such 
 that we all thought him dying, and Mrs. Ar- 
 buthnot involuntarily exclaimed, " This is quite 
 an Egyptian feast." On another authority he 
 is represented as being overcome by terrors and
 
 MEN OF GENIUS. 15-5 
 
 excessive passion in his last moments, and, after 
 one of his fits of choler, being overheard by 
 Sir Harry Mildmay complaining to himself, 
 and saying, " What will my poor soul undergo 
 for all these things ?" 
 
 Keats, a little before he died, when his 
 friend asked him how he did, replied in a low 
 voice, " Better, my friend. I feel the daisies 
 growing over me. 1 ' 
 
 In D'Israeli's admirable work on " Men of 
 Genius," from which some of the preceding ac- 
 counts are taken, many others are to be found, 
 tending to illustrate more forcibly, perhaps, than 
 any of those instances we have given, the sooth- 
 ing, and, if the word may be allowed, the be- 
 nign influence of literary habits on the tran- 
 quillity of the individual in his latest mo- 
 ments.
 
 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 lo insmoieJiB sdi 
 
 7B3 ",80' 
 
 :>ra arij 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE IMPROVIDENCE OF LITERARY MEN. 
 
 IF the misfortunes of men of genius were un- 
 connected with their infirmities, any notice of 
 them, however brief, would be irrelevant to the 
 subject of these pages. In literature itself, 
 there surely is nothing to favour improvidence, 
 or to unfit men for the active duties of life ; but 
 in the habits which literary men contract from 
 excessive application to their pursuits, there is 
 a great deal to disqualify the studious man for 
 those petty details of economy and prudence,
 
 OF LITEEAEY MEN. 157 
 
 which are essential to the attainment of worldly 
 prosperity. " It is incongruous," says Burns, 
 " 'tis absurd to suppose that the man, whose 
 mind glows with sentiments lighted up at the 
 sacred flame of poetry a man whose heart dis- 
 tends with benevolence to all the human race, 
 who soars above this little scene of things, can 
 condescend to mind the paltry concerns about 
 which the terrae-filial race fret, and fume, and 
 vex themselves." Poor Burns had evidently his 
 own improvidence in view when he made this 
 observation, but he must have been the most 
 simple-minded of bards if he expected to dis- 
 arm the censure of the world by it. Its cha- 
 rity may sometimes extend to the eccentricities 
 of genius, but seldom to the poverty that 
 springs from its improvidence. The greatest 
 explosion of periodical morality that we remem- 
 ber to have occurred for some years, took place
 
 158 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 in most of the newspapers of the day, not many 
 months ago, on the occasion of the appearance 
 of the life of a celebrated bard, in which the 
 biographer had unfortunately spoken of the 
 poetic temperament as one ill-calculated to 
 favour the cultivation of the social and domestic- 
 ties. Many men of genius have unquestionably 
 been every thing that men should be in all the 
 relations of private life; therefore, with those 
 outrageous moralists, there was no reason why 
 all men of genius should not be patterns of ex- 
 cellence to all good citizens, husbands, fathers, 
 and economical managers of private affairs. No 
 reason can be given why they should not be 
 such. We only know, that such the majority 
 of them unfortunately are not ; and, indeed, in 
 the varied distribution of nature's gifts, when 
 we generally find the absence of one excellence 
 atoned for by the possession of another, it would
 
 OF LITERARY MEN. 
 
 be in vain to expect a combination of all such 
 advantages in the same individual. Nature 
 cannot afford to be so profusely lavish even to 
 her favourites. It is somewhat singular, that 
 those instances of pre-eminent genius, accom- 
 panied by well-regulated conduct and domestic 
 virtues, which are adduced in opposition to the 
 notion that the temperament of genius exerts an 
 unfavourable influence on the habits of private 
 life, are of persons who never took upon them 
 the ties of husbands or of fathers. And had 
 they done so, who knows what their conduct 
 might have been in these relations ? Newton, 
 Galileo, Michael Angelo, Locke, Hume, Pope, 
 never married ; neither did Bacon, Voltaire, and 
 many other illustrious men, who either dis- 
 trusted their own fitness for the married state, 
 or were afraid to stake their tranquillity on the 
 hazard of the matrimonial die.
 
 160 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 Whatever doubt there may be, whether 
 the man who lives sibi et musis in his study, 
 and not in society, who communes with former 
 ages, and not with the events which are passing 
 around him, is eminently qualified for the du- 
 ties and offices of married life, it cannot be de- 
 nied that his habits, and the tendency of his 
 pursuits, are ill-calculated to make him a pro- 
 vident or a thrifty man. 
 
 In all ages and in all countries, poverty lias 
 been the patrimony of the Muses. Johnson, 
 Goldsmith, Fielding, and Butler, commenced 
 their literary career in garrets, from which, no 
 doubt, they had as unimpeded a prospect of the 
 workhouse as the summits of Parnassus are said 
 to afford. Even Addison wrote his Campaign 
 in a garret in the Haymarket. Camoens died 
 in an alms-house, and fifteen years afterwards 
 had a splendid monument erected to his me-
 
 OF LITERARY MEN. 16*1 
 
 mory. It was with the poor man of genius in 
 that day as the present : " And they who 
 loathed his life, might gild his grave." Chat- 
 terton lies buried in Shoe-lane workhouse, and 
 Otway expired in a pot-house. The Adven- 
 turer goes so far as to state, that not a favourite 
 of the Muses, since the days of Amphion, was 
 ever able to build a house. Poor Scott, how- 
 ever, did more than build one, and the ex- 
 ample is certainly not encouraging to authors. 
 
 But perhaps there is not another instance, 
 even in this land of wealth, of an author by 
 profession dwelling in a habitation of his own 
 erection. 
 
 Burton ascribes the heedlessness of literary 
 men, of their own affairs, and consequently 
 their poverty, to the unhappy influence of the 
 Muses' destiny. " When Jupiter's daughters," 
 he says, " were all married to the gods, the
 
 162 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 Muses alone were left solitary, probably be- 
 cause they had no portions. Helicon was for- 
 saken of all suitors, and Calliope only conti- 
 nued to be a maid, because she had no dower." 
 Petronius, he narrates, knew a scholar by the 
 meanness of his apparel. " There came," saith 
 lie, " by chance into my company, a fellow not 
 very spruce to look on, whom I could perceive, 
 by that note alone, to be a scholar, whom com- 
 monly all rich men hate. I asked him what he 
 was ? and he answered a poet. I demanded, 
 why he was ragged ? he told me this kind of 
 learning never made any man rich." 
 
 "All which our ordinary students," says Bur- 
 ton, " right well perceiving in the Universities, 
 how unprofitable are these poetical and philoso- 
 phical pursuits of theirs, apply themselves, in all 
 haste, to more commodious and lucrative profes- 
 sions. They are no longer heedful of knowledge
 
 OF LITERARY MEN. ] G3 
 
 he who can tell his money, hath arithmetic 
 enough: he is a true geometrician, who can mea- 
 sure a good fortune to himself: a perfect astro- 
 loger, who can cast the rise and fall of others, and 
 turn their errant motions to his own advantage : 
 the best optician, who can reflect the beams of 
 a great man's favour, and cause them to shine 
 upon himself." 
 
 JEneas Sylvius says he knew many scholars 
 in his time " excellent, well-learned men, but 
 so rude, so silly, that they had no common 
 civility, nor knew how to manage either their 
 own affairs, or those of the public." 
 
 " They are generally looked down upon," 
 continues Burton, " on account of their car- 
 riage, because they cannot ride a horse, which 
 every clown can manage ; salute and court a 
 gentlewoman ; carve properly at table ; cringe 
 and make congies, which every common swasher
 
 164 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 can do." They cannot truly vaunt much of 
 their accomplishments in this way; they -belong 
 to that race, of one of whom Pliny gave the 
 description " He is yet a scholar ; than which 
 kind of men there is nothing so simple, so sin- 
 cere, and none better." 
 
 But the miseries of Grub-street are no longer 
 known : well-fed authors may be daily encoun- 
 tered in " the Row, 1 ' and no writer of any repute 
 perambulates the town, at least within a rood of 
 Bond-street, in a thread-bare coat. In short, 
 there is a general opinion that literature has of 
 late become a lucrative employment ; that God 
 has mollified the hearts of booksellers " hearts," 
 which in bye-gone times had " become like that 
 of Leviathan, firm as a stone, yea hard as a 
 piece of nether mill-stone." 
 
 It is commonly imagined, that because it has 
 become the fashion for people of rank to write
 
 OF LITEHARY MEN. 165 
 
 books, there are no poor authors, no " patient 
 merit" unrewarded in the metropolis no un- 
 fortunate men of genius condemned to bear 
 " the whips and scorns of the time," to hawk 
 about their intellectual wares from publisher to 
 publisher, till they are tempted, like poor Col- 
 lins, to consign them to the flames ; to dance 
 attendance on some bashaw of " the trade," who 
 rubs his soft hands, while he is sifting, not the 
 merit of the performance, but the politics and 
 connexions of the author, and when he has 
 duly ascertained that he is dealing with a man 
 of the principles which every author who is a 
 gentleman is supposed to profess, he then may 
 be open to an offer for the work, and perhaps 
 in as many weeks as days have been promised, 
 (and if the author is a very poor and modest 
 man,) in as many months the manuscript may 
 be examined, and in all probability very civilly
 
 166 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 declined by one whose promises may have 
 proved the bitter bread of disappointment, and 
 who never may have, or know what it is to feel, 
 that sickness of the heart which arises from hope 
 deferred. Or perhaps the poor author may try his 
 fate elsewhere,"arid his heart may die away within 
 him, while he is kept waiting in an ante-room 
 for the customary period of solitary confine- 
 ment, that is sufficient to subdue the ardent 
 expectations of an author, before he is admitted 
 to the presence of " the great invisible." But 
 when at length his form is revealed to the 
 author's eye, emerging from a pile of fashion- 
 able publications, to be frozen to death by 
 inches by the cold civility of his smile, to be 
 asked in " bated breath and bondsman key," 
 for the nature of the influence that is to push 
 the book, and in default of an aristocratic name, 
 and a fashionable acquaintance, to be bowed
 
 OF LITERARY MEN. 167 
 
 like a mandarin to the outer door, is what he has 
 to expect, and to be assured all the time that the 
 work is a very good work in its way, but that 
 authors who would be read, must have titles as 
 well as their books, and that nothing short of 
 a baronetcy will go down in a title-page. 
 
 If it be imagined there are no authors now- 
 a-days, pining as in former times, in want and 
 wretchedness, because their destitution is not 
 so much obtruded on the public as it formerly 
 was wont to be, little is the condition of a vast 
 portion of the literary men of London known. 
 Because shame may not allow them to parade 
 their poverty before the eyes of their fellow- 
 men in Regent Street or Hyde Park, because 
 their seedy garments and attenuated forms are 
 not to be seen in public places, forsooth they 
 exist not ! alas ! they are to be found 
 elsewhere, and their familiar companions are 
 still but too frequently
 
 168 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 Pallentes morbi, luctus, curaeque laborquc 
 
 Et metus, et malesuada fames, et turpis egestas 
 
 Terribiles visu forma. 
 
 But it would be absurd, as well as unjust, to 
 attribute the misfortunes of literary men to the 
 conduct of those whose business it is to cater for 
 the literary taste of the public. If authors 
 have to complain, it is of the system on which 
 the book trade is carried on, and not of the in- 
 dividuals who are employed in it : generally 
 speaking, it must be acknowleged, men more 
 liberal and more honourable are not to be met 
 with. 
 
 It cannot be denied that literary men are too 
 often desirous to cover their own imprudence by 
 taxing the world with neglecting merit, by 
 railing at Fortune for the blind distribution of 
 her gifts. " Many of the English poets," says 
 Goethe, " after spending their early years in
 
 OF LITERARY MEN. 169 
 
 folly and licentiousness, have afterwards thought 
 themselves entitled to deplore the vanities of 
 human life. It is unreasonable of those who 
 have wholly devoted themselves to the acquisi- 
 tion of fame, and not of fortune, to expect the 
 advantages that are solely in the latter's gift. 
 Person, in his embarrassment, thought it a hard 
 case, that with all his Greek, he could not com- 
 mand a hundred pounds ; and Burns, in his 
 letters, whines about his poverty, as if he had 
 expected, by the cultivation of poetry, to have 
 amassed a fortune. 
 
 The most sensible observations we have ever 
 seen on this subject are those of a lady, whose 
 reputation deservedly ranks high in the literary 
 world, and such is their merit, that we may be 
 permitted to end this subject with their in- 
 sertion. 
 
 " The poet complains of his poverty when he 
 VOL. i. i
 
 170 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 sees a rich booby wallowing in wealth, for- 
 getting such wealth is acquired or retained by 
 such paltry arts as he disdains to practise : if 
 he refuse to pay the price, why expect the pur- 
 chase ? We should consider this world as a , 
 great mart of commerce, where wealth, ease, 
 fame, and knowledge, are exposed to our view. 
 Our industry and labour are so much ready 
 money, which we are to lay out to the best 
 advantage. Examine, choose, or reject the 
 wares, but stand to your own judgment, and do 
 
 not, like children, when you have purchased 
 i 
 
 one thing, repine that you do not possess 
 another, which you did not purchase. If you 
 would be rich, you must put your heart against 
 the Muses, and be content to feed your under- 
 standing with plain and household truths. 
 You must keep on in one beaten track, without 
 turning to the right hand or the left. ' But I can-
 
 OF LITERARY MEN. 171 
 
 not submit to drudgery like this I feel a spirit 
 above it.' 'Tis well to be above it then, 
 only do not repine that you are not rich. 
 
 " Is knowledge the pearl of price ? you see 
 that too may be purchased by steady applica- 
 tion, and long solitary hours of study and 
 reflection. * But,' says the man of letters, * is it 
 not a hardship that many an illiterate fellow, 
 who cannot construe the motto on his coach, 
 shall raise a fortune, and make a figure, 
 while I have little more than the common 
 necessaries of life ?' 
 
 " Was it in order to raise a fortune you 
 consumed the sprightly hours of youth in 
 study and retirement ? Was it to be rich 
 that you grew pale over the midnight lamp ? 
 You have then mistaken your path, and ill 
 employed your industry. * What reward have 
 I then for all my labours ?' What reward ! 
 
 i 2
 
 172 THE IMPROVIDENCE 
 
 A large comprehensive soul, well purged 
 from vulgar fears, and perturbations, and pre- 
 judices, able to interpret the works of man 
 and God. A rich, nourishing, cultivated 
 mind, pregnant with inexhaustible stores of 
 entertainment and reflection. A perpetual spring 
 of fresh ideas, and the conscious dignity of 
 superior intelligence. Good heavens ! and what 
 reward can you ask beside ? 
 
 " If a mean dirty fellow should have amassed 
 wealth enough to buy half a nation, is it a 
 reproach upon the economy of Providence? 
 Not in the least. He made himself a mean 
 dirty fellow for that very end. He has paid 
 his health, his conscience, his liberty for it, and 
 will you envy him his bargain ? Will you 
 hang your head and blush in his presence, 
 because he outshines you in show and equip- 
 age ? Lift your head with a noble confidence,
 
 OF LITERARY MEX. 173 
 
 and say to yourself, ' I have not these things, it 
 is true ; but it is because I have not sought 
 them ; it is because I possess something better. 
 I have chosen my lot; I am content and 
 satisfied.' "
 
 174 APPLICATION OF 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING OBSER- 
 VATIONS. 
 
 THE history of men of genius affords abun- 
 dant proof that the habits of literary men 
 are unfavourable to health, and that constant 
 application to those studies, whose acknow- 
 ledged tendency is to exalt the intellect, and to 
 enlarge the faculties of the mind, are never- 
 theless productive of consequences similar to 
 those which arise from physical infirmities. 
 " The conversation of a poet, " says Gold- 
 smith, " is that of a man of sense, while his 
 actions are those of a fool."
 
 THE PRECEDING OBSERVATIONS. 175 
 
 There is no reason why folly should emanate 
 from poetry ; but we have reason enough to 
 know that many mental infirmities arise from 
 sedentary habits and their accompanying evils ; 
 yet in the face of modern biography, it requires 
 a little courage to assert that bodily disease has 
 an influence over the feelings, temper, or sen- 
 sibility of studious men, and that it gives a 
 colour to character, which it is often impos- 
 sible to discriminate by any other light than that 
 o fmedical philosophy. In the following pages 
 we purpose to illustrate this opinion, by re- 
 ferring to the lives of a few of those indi- 
 viduals, the splendour of whose career has 
 brought, not only their frailties, but their pecu- 
 liarities into public notice, and by pointing out, 
 in each instance, those deviations from health 
 which deserve to be taken into account in fairly 
 considering the literary character.
 
 176 POPE. 
 
 The most frequent disorders of literary men 
 are dyspepsia and hypochondria, and in ex- 
 treme cases, the termination of these maladies is 
 in some cerebral disorder, either mania, epi- 
 lepsy, or paralysis, and these we intend to 
 notice in the order of their succession in the 
 following brief sketches of the physical in- 
 firmities of Pope, Johnson, Burns, Cowper, 
 Byron, and, lastly, Scott, in whose case the 
 absence of the ordinary errors of genius, may 
 be ascribed in a great measure to well-regulated 
 habits, which certainly were not those of the 
 others above mentioned. 
 
 POPE. 
 
 For about three-quarters of a century the 
 public laboured under the delusion that Pope
 
 POPE. 177 
 
 was a poet, and moreover a man of tolerable 
 morals, till an amiable clergyman, instigated 
 no doubt by the most laudable motives, took 
 upon himself to disabuse the world of its error, 
 and to pull down the reputation of Homer's 
 translator from the eminence it had undeservedly 
 attained. It was an adventurous task, and one 
 which required a mind fraught with all the fer- 
 vour of literary controversy, and actuated 
 solely by an honest detestation of false preten- 
 sions and flagrant imposition. He had to in- 
 validate the title of an impostor to literary 
 immortality ; he had to impugn the character 
 of a man who is supposed to have had some 
 virtues, and whose failings had unfortunately 
 been almost forgotten; and verily, the task 
 was performed with signal intrepidity, though 
 not perhaps with complete success. A trouble- 
 some opponent took the field in defence of 
 
 i5
 
 178 POPE. 
 
 a brother bard's disparaged fame, and he laid 
 about him like one who was accustomed to 
 spare no critic in his rage, and no reviewer in 
 his anger. 
 
 The distinction of being attacked by such an 
 adversary was the only advantage to be gained 
 by the contest; but this advantage was pur- 
 chased at the expense of considerable punish- 
 ment. The controversy was a hot one, and 
 the fame of the individual who was the subject 
 of the quarrel had to pass through an ordeal 
 of fire ; but phoenix-like, the character of the 
 poet rose triumphant from the flames, albeit 
 the conduct of the man came forth, not alto- 
 gether unscathed by the conflagration. Not 
 even Byron's genius could rescue the memory 
 of Pope from the obloquy of the long-forgotten 
 errors that had been raked up by the indefa- 
 tigable industry of his opponent ; for in at-
 
 POPE. 179 
 
 tempting to palliate those errors, the bodily 
 infirmities of the victim of the controversy 
 were overlooked, and no satisfactory expla- 
 nation was given of that peevishness of tem- 
 per, and waywardness of humour, which un- 
 questionably tarnished the character of this 
 favourite we had almost said, this spoiled child 
 of genius. 
 
 The following references to his habits and 
 temperament may probably throw some little 
 light on the nature of his failings, and tend 
 even to remove the impression which the ani- 
 madversions of Mr. Bowles may have pro- 
 duced. " By natural deformity, or accidental 
 distortion,' 1 we are told by Johnson, " the 
 vital functions of Pope were so much disor- 
 dered, that his life was a long disease.' 1 The 
 deformity alluded to arose from an affection of 
 the spine, contracted in infancy, and to which
 
 180 POPE. 
 
 the extreme delicacy of his constitution is to be 
 attributed. 
 
 When it is recollected that the nerves which 
 supply the abdominal viscera with the energy 
 that is essential to their functions, are derived 
 from the spinal column, the cause of the disor- 
 der of his digestive powers during the whole of 
 his life is easily conceived. As he advanced in 
 life the original complaint ceased to make any 
 further progress, and its effects on his consti- 
 tution might have been removed by due atten- 
 tion to regimen and exercise ; but instead of 
 these, active medicines and stimulating diet 
 were the means he constantly employed of tem- 
 porarily palliating the exhaustion, and obviat- 
 ing the excitement consequent on excessive 
 mental application. None of his biographers, 
 indeed, allude to his having suffered from indi- 
 gestion ; and it is even possible that he might
 
 POPE. 181 
 
 not have been himself aware of the nature of 
 those anomalous symptoms of dyspepsia, which 
 mimic the form of every other malady ; those 
 symptoms of giddiness, languor, dejection, pal- 
 pitation of the heart, constant headache, dim- 
 ness of sight, occasional failure of the mental 
 powers, exhaustion of nervous energy, depriving 
 the body of vital heat, and the diminution of 
 muscular strength, without a corresponding loss 
 of flesh, he frequently complains of; and every 
 medical man is aware, that they are the charac- 
 teristic symptoms of dyspepsia. 
 
 One patient calls his disorder spleen, another 
 nervousness, another melancholy, another irri- 
 tability : the medical nomenclature is no less 
 prolific, but all their titles are for a single 
 malady, and " not one of them/ 1 says Dr. James 
 Johnson, in his admirable treatise on the ' Mor- 
 bid Sensibility of the Stomach,' " expresses the
 
 182 POPE. 
 
 real nature of the malady, but only some of its 
 multiform symptoms. Of all these designations, 
 indigestion has been the most hacknied title, 
 and it is, in my opinion, the most erroneous. 
 The very worst forms of the disease forms in 
 which the body is tortured for years, and the 
 mind ultimately wrecked, often exhibit no sign 
 or proof of indigestion, in the ordinary sense of 
 the word, the appetite being good, the digestion 
 apparently complete." 
 
 The fact is, that where pain is not the cha- 
 racter of the disease, the attention of the patient 
 is carried to the symptoms in organs, perhaps, 
 the remotest from the cause ; and in this parti- 
 cular disorder the patient is seldom or ever 
 sensible of pain in the actual seat of it. 
 
 We are told by Pope's biographer, " that 
 the indulgence and accommodation that his 
 sickness required, had taught him all the un-
 
 POPE. 183 
 
 pleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary 
 man." And in various other passages we are 
 informed that he was irascible, capricious, pee- 
 vish, and resentful ; often wanton in his attacks, 
 and unjust in his censures; that he delighted in 
 artifice in his intercourse with mankind, so that 
 he could hardly drink tea without a stratagem ; 
 that his cunning sometimes descended to such 
 petty parsimony as writing his compositions on 
 the backs of letters, by which perhaps he might 
 
 have saved five shillings in five years, (a crime 
 
 & 
 against stationary, by the way, which he shared 
 
 in common with Sir Walter Scott,) that al- 
 though he occasionally gave a splendid dinner, 
 and was enabled to do so on an income of about 
 eight hundred a year, his entertainment was 
 often scanty to his friends, and he was capa- 
 ble of setting a single pint upon the table, and 
 saying to his guests when he retired, " Gentle-
 
 184 POPE. 
 
 men, I leave you to your wine." We are told, 
 moreover, that his satire had often in it more 
 of petulance, personality, and malignity, than 
 of moral design, or a desire to refine the public 
 taste. 
 
 These are serious charges against the justice 
 and amiability of his character ; and probably 
 there is a great deal of truth in them, but they 
 only apply to his character, not to his dispo- 
 sition. 
 
 There is a paradox in the conduct of literary 
 men, which makes it necessary to draw a dis- 
 tinction between their actions, and their senti- 
 ments, between the author with a pen in his 
 hand, and the man without it; between the 
 character that is formed by the world, and the 
 disposition which is only known by private 
 friends. 
 
 Johnson has pictured Pope as he really ap-
 
 POPE. 185 
 
 peared to the world ; but Bolingbroke spoke of 
 him when he was on his death-bed, not as he 
 appeared to be, but as he knew him to have 
 been, when he said to his weeping attendants, 
 " I have known him these thirty years ; tye was 
 the kindest-hearted man in the world." Who 
 knows under what paroxysm of mental irrita- 
 tion of that disease which, more than any other, 
 domineers over the feelings of the sufferer, he 
 might have written those bitter sarcasms which 
 he levelled against his literary opponents ? 
 Who knows in what moment of bodily pain 
 his irascibility might have taken the form of 
 unjustifiable satire, or his morbid sensibility 
 assumed the sickly shape of petulance and 
 peevishness ? Who knows how the strength of 
 the strong mind might have been cast down by 
 his sufferings, when " he descended to the arti- 
 fice" of imposing on a bookseller, and of "writ-
 
 186 POPE. 
 
 ing those letters for effect which he published 
 by subterfuge ?" Who, that has observed how 
 the vacillating conduct of the dyspeptic invalid 
 imitates the vagaries of this proteiform malady, 
 can wonder at his capriciousness, or be sur- 
 prised at the anomaly of bitterness on the 
 tongue, and benevolence in the heart, of the 
 same individual. 
 
 But Pope's biting sarcasm was only aimed at 
 his enemies. Byron little cared whether friend 
 or foe was the victim of his spleen ; those he 
 best loved in the world were those who suffered 
 most from the bitterness of his distempered 
 feelings. To read those injurious lines on 
 " Rogers," that have lately appeared, and 
 which never ought to have been dragged into 
 public notice, is to fancy the malignity of By- 
 ron greater even than Milton's, which (we are 
 falsely told) was sufficient to make hell grow 
 darker at its scowl.
 
 POPE. 187 
 
 But whose, in this instance, was the greater 
 malignity of the two the writer of productions, 
 penned, in all probability, under the excite- 
 ment of mental irritability and bodily infirmity, 
 without a moment's forethought, or an aim, or 
 an object, beyond the miserable gratification of 
 seeing on paper the severest thing he could say 
 of his best friend : an exercise of melancholy, 
 to try how far poetic ingenuity could exag- 
 gerate the foibles of those he knew to be exempt 
 from grave defects written without premedi- 
 tation, and never intended for publicity ; or the 
 deep, deliberate malignity of the literary jackal, 
 that panders to the rage of the noble-hearted 
 lion, and then prowls about his lair, and steals 
 away, when the creature sleeps, the provender 
 of the mangled disjectce membri humanitatis^ 
 for the " omni vorantia et homicida gula " of 
 the savage community of his own species?
 
 188 POPE. 
 
 Who might not wish that " a whip were 
 placed in every honest hand," to punish the 
 offender, who reckless of the feelings of the 
 living, and regardless of the fame and honour 
 of the dead, dragged those effusions into light 
 which were born in the obscurity of the study, 
 and never meant to be sent beyond its precincts? 
 No malignity is comparable to his, for whom 
 there is no sanctity in the grave, in friendship 
 no respect, and no restraint on the pen that 
 perpetuates a slander that had otherwise been 
 forgotten ! 
 
 But what have the failings of Lord Byron, 
 or the perfidy of his friends, to do with our 
 subject ? little more, indeed, than to break up 
 the monotony of the task of recording the infir- 
 mities of his brother bard. That these had 
 their origin in his dyspeptic malady, we have 
 little doubt.
 
 POPE. 189 
 
 " From numerous facts, 11 says Dr. James 
 Johnson, " which have come within my own 
 observation, I am convinced that many strange 
 antipathies, disgusts, caprices of temper, and 
 eccentricities, which are considered solely as 
 obliquities of the intellect, have their source in 
 corporeal disorder. 
 
 " The great majority of those complaints which 
 are considered as purely mental, such as iras- 
 cibility, melancholy, timidity, and irresolution, 
 might be greatly remedied, if not entirely re- 
 moved by a proper system of temperance, and 
 with very little medicine. There is no ac- 
 counting for the magic-like spell, which an- 
 nihilates for a time the whole energy of the 
 mind, and renders the victim of dyspepsia 
 afraid of his own shadow, or of things, if pos- 
 sible, more unsubstantial than shadows. 
 
 " It is not likely that the great men of the 
 earth should be exempt from these visitations
 
 190 POPE. 
 
 any more than the little: and if so, we may 
 reasonably conclude that there are other things 
 besides ' conscience ' which ' make cowards of 
 us all ;' and that by a temporary gastric irrita- 
 tion many an * enterprize of vast pith and mo- 
 ment ' has had ' its current turned away,' and 
 ' lost the name of action.' 
 
 " The philosopher and the metaphysician, who 
 know but little of these reciprocities of mind 
 and matter, have drawn many a false conclu- 
 sion from, and erected many a baseless hypo- 
 thesis on, the actions of men. Many a happy 
 thought has sprung from an empty stomach : 
 many a terrible and merciless edict has gone 
 forth in consequence of an irritated gastric 
 nerve. 
 
 " Thus health," continues the author we 
 have just quoted, " may make the same man a 
 hero in the field, whom dyspepsia may render 
 imbecile in the cabinet."
 
 POPE. 191 
 
 It was under the influence of this malady 
 that Pope's better judgment was occasionally 
 warped, and that his feelings, for the time, 
 swayed to and fro with his infirmities. On no 
 other supposition can the anomalies in his cha- 
 racter be reconciled. Both of his early biogra- 
 phers admit that his writings, especially his 
 letters, were at variance with his conduct ; they 
 exhibit, we are told by Johnson, a distaste of 
 life, a contempt of death, a perpetual and un- 
 clouded effulgence of general benevolence and 
 particular affection ; " but it is easy," he adds, 
 " to despise death, when there is no danger, and 
 to glow with benevolence when there is nothing 
 to be given." 
 
 But surely it is not so very heinous an offence 
 against the epistolary statute of sincerity, to 
 " assume a virtue," even " when we have it 
 not ;" and Johnson, himself, even questioned
 
 192 POPE. 
 
 the truth of the common opinion, that " he 
 who writes to his friend, lays his bosom open 
 before him." Very few, he says, " can boast of 
 hearts which they dare lay open to themselves ; 
 and, certainly, what we hide from ourselves we 
 do not show to our friends. In the eagerness 
 of conversation the first emotions of the mind 
 often burst out before they are considered, but 
 a friendly letter is a calm, deliberate perform- 
 ance, in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of 
 solitude ; and surely no man sits down to de- 
 preciate, by design, his own character. By 
 whom can a man wish to be thought so much 
 better than he is, than by him whose kindness 
 he desires to gain or keep ? Even in writing to 
 the world there is less restraint." 
 
 But though his letters are filled with those 
 ordinary topics of literary correspondence, a 
 sense of the worthlessness of his own produc-
 
 POPE. 193 
 
 tions, a spirit of invulnerability against the 
 shafts of censure, nevertheless though censure is 
 the tax, according to Swift, which a man pays 
 to the public for being eminent, no one paid 
 that tax with a worse grace than Pope. There 
 are but three ways," (he remarks elsewhere,) 
 " for a man to revenge himself of the censure of 
 the world ; to despise it, to return the like, or 
 to endeavour to live so as to avoid it. The first 
 of these is usually pretended, the last is almost 
 impossible the universal practice is for the 
 second." Pope, forsooth, did practise' the se- 
 cond with a vengeance, but to use the expres- 
 sion Johnson applied to another of the genus 
 irritabile, he still was " a sapling on the sum- 
 mit of Parnassus, blown about by every wind 
 of criticism." 
 
 How severely he suffered from his malady may 
 be inferred from the account Johnson has given 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 194 POPE. 
 
 of his habits and condition about the middle of 
 his life. " His constitution," he says, " which 
 was orginally feeble, became now so debilitated 
 that he stood in perpetual need of female at- 
 tendance ; and so great was his sensibility of 
 
 4U.T 
 cold, that he wore a kind of fjfr doublet under a 
 
 / 
 shirt of very coarse warm linen. When he rose 
 
 he was invested in a bodice made of stiff can- 
 vass, being scarcely able to hold himself erect 
 till it was laced, and he then put on a flannel 
 waistcoat. His legs were so slender, that he 
 enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, 
 which were drawn on and off by the maid -, for 
 he was not able to dress or undress himself, and 
 he neither went to bed nor rose without help. 11 
 This extraordinary necessity for artificial warmth 
 was an evident indication of the deficiency of 
 nervous energy; and what could be expected 
 from the prostration of mental and bodily
 
 POPE. 195 
 
 power, the inevitable consequence of such a 
 miserable condition of the system, but irritabi- 
 lity of temper, peevishness, and petulance? " It 
 is said," says Dr. James Johnson, " and I be- 
 lieve with justice, that an infant never cries 
 without feeling some pain. 
 
 " The same observation might be extended to 
 maturer years, and it might be safely asserted 
 that the temper is never unusually irritable 
 without some moral or physical cause and 
 much more frequently a physical cause than is 
 suspecteii. A man's temper may undoubtedly 
 be soured by a train of moral circumstances, 
 but I believe that it is much more frequently 
 rendered irritable by the effects of those moral 
 causes on his corporeal organs and functions. 
 The moral cause makes its first impression on 
 the brain, the organ of the mind. The organs 
 of digestion are those disturbed sympathetically 
 
 K 2
 
 196 
 
 POPE. 
 
 and re-act on the brain : and thus the recipro- 
 cal action and re-action of the two systems of 
 organs on each other produce a host of effects, 
 moral as well as physical, by which the temper 
 is broken, and the health impaired." 
 
 Head-ache was the urgent symptom which 
 Pope constantly complained of, and this he was 
 in the habit of relieving by inhaling the steam 
 of coffee. It is difficult to conceive on what 
 principle this remedy could alleviate his suffer- 
 ings ; but from the manner in which he aggra- 
 vated them by improper diet, it is very proba- 
 ble that his remedy was no better than his re- 
 gimen. It appears that, like all dyspeptic men, 
 
 he was fond of every thing that was not fit for 
 
 
 
 him. " He was too indulgent to his appetite," 
 says his biographer; "he loved meat highly sea- 
 soned, and if he sat down to a variety of dishes, 
 he would oppress his stomach by repletion ; and
 
 POPE. 197 
 
 though he seemed to be angry when a dram was 
 offered him, he did not forbear to drink it : his 
 friends, who knew the avenues to his heart, 
 pampered him with presents of luxury which 
 he did not suffer to stand neglected. We are 
 told by Dr. King, his contemporary and friend, 
 that his frame of body promised any thing 
 but long health, but that he certainly hast- 
 ened his death by feeding much on high sea- 
 soned dishes, and drinking spirits." 
 
 From the various accounts given of his mode 
 of living, and of the sufferings it entailed on 
 him, it was evident that his appetite was de- 
 praved by indigestion ; and it is no less obvious, 
 that constitutional debility induced by that 
 deformity, either natural or accidental, under 
 which he laboured from his cradle, had given 
 the predisposition to this disorder. His fre- 
 quent head-aches, and the sensation of con-
 
 198 POPE 
 
 fusion and giddiness after application to study, 
 or excess in diet, those premonitory symptoms 
 of dyspepsia, he appears to have looked upon as 
 his original disease, whereas the stomach was 
 the seat of his disorder, and the affection of the 
 head only sympathetic with it. Yet it must be 
 admitted, that when literary men are the sub- 
 jects of this disorder, that it is very often 
 exceedingly difficult to determine whether the 
 head or the stomach is primarily affected ; but 
 in whichever of them is its origin, so immediate 
 is the influence of the one on the other, that the 
 treatment is not materially embarrassed by our 
 uncertainty of the primary seat of the disease. 
 It is the nature of parts sympathetically af- 
 fected to become disordered in their functions, 
 rather than organically diseased : at least it is a 
 considerable period before any alteration of 
 structure in a symptomatic disorder takes
 
 POPE. 199 
 
 place. The interval between the two results is 
 occupied by a long train of anomalous ills, 
 which are generally denominated nervous. The 
 term is vague and unmeaning enough for all 
 the purposes of nosology. It implies a host of 
 sufferings which sap the strength and sink the 
 spirits of the invalid, and this hydra-headed 
 malady may continue for years an incubus on 
 his happiness, which utterly destroys not 
 health, but renders valetudinarianism a sort 
 of middle state of existence between indis- 
 position and disease. The symptomatic affec- 
 tion of the head only becomes an organic 
 disease, when the long-continued cause has 
 given it such power that the effect acquires the 
 force of a first cause in its influence on an 
 organ previously weakened or predisposed to 
 disease. It is then easily conceived how the 
 simple head-ache, in the case of Pope, con-
 
 
 200 POPE. 
 
 tinued for years symptomatic of a disorder 
 of the stomach, aggravated by mental excite- 
 ment and improper diet ; till the disturbance of 
 the functions of the brain ultimately debi- 
 litated that organ, and left it no longer able 
 to resist the effects of the constant exercise 
 of the mental faculties. The result of such 
 long-continued disturbance of the cerebral 
 functions, there is generally great reason to 
 apprehend, will be either alteration in the 
 structure, softening of its substance, or effusion 
 serous or sanguineous. 
 
 There is great reason to believe that one of 
 these terminations took place in the case of 
 Pope several years before his death, as it was 
 found to have done in the case of Swift, and more 
 recently in that of Scott. Even when Pope was 
 apparently in the enjoyment of tolerable health, 
 he had evident symptoms of pressure on the
 
 POPE. 201 
 
 brain, or at least of an unequal and imperfect 
 distribution of the blood in that organ. Those 
 symptoms are only noticed by his contem- 
 poraries as curious phenomena connected with 
 his habits of life. Spence says he frequently 
 complained of seeing every thing in the room as 
 through a curtain, and on another occasion of 
 seeing false colours on certain objects. At 
 another time, on a sick bed, he asked Dodsley 
 what arm it was that had the appearance of 
 coming out from the wall; and at another 
 period he told Spence, if he had any vanity, 
 he had enough to mortify it a few days before, 
 for he had lost his mind for a whole day. 
 Well might Bolingbroke say, " the greatest 
 hero is nothing under a certain state of the 
 nerves ; his mind becomes like a fine ring of 
 bells, jangled and out of tune!" 
 
 The debility of his constitution in his latter 
 
 K5
 
 202 POPE. 
 
 years rendered his existence burthensome to 
 himself and others; his irritability increased 
 with his infirmities, and the peevishness of dis- 
 ease was aggravated by the unkindness and 
 unfeeling conduct of the woman who had been 
 his companion and attendant for many years. 
 The frequent expression of his weariness of 
 life hardly deserves the suspicion of affectation 
 which Johnson entertained of its sincerity. 
 Surely there must have been no little inherent 
 melancholy in the temperament of a man who, 
 in Johnson's own words, "by no merriment 
 either of others or his own, was ever seen excited 
 to laughter." 
 
 For five years previous to his decease he had 
 been afflicted with asthma ; his constitution was 
 completely shattered, and at length dropsy, the 
 common attendant on long sufferings and ex- 
 treme debility, made its appearance. He was
 
 POPE. 203 
 
 for some time delirious, but a day or two before 
 his death he became collected. He was asked 
 whether a Catholic priest should not be called 
 to him ; he replied, " I do not think it is essen- 
 tial, but it will be very right, and I thank you 
 for putting me in mind of it." The calm self- 
 possession, the dignity, and the decorum of his 
 reply, well became the last moments of a Chris- 
 tian philosopher ; the forms of his religion had 
 no hold of his affections, but that was no reason 
 why its duties should be neglected, or why the 
 feelings of those who believed in the efficacy of 
 its forms should be outraged. Death at length 
 happily terminated the sufferings of a life which 
 was a long disease, for such was the career of 
 Pope, from his cradle to the tomb, in which he 
 was deposited in his fifty-sixth year. 
 
 Whatever were his infirmities, however great 
 their influence on his temper or his conduct, it
 
 204 POPE. 
 
 appears that neither his irascibility, nor his 
 capriciousness, had ever estranged a real friend. 
 His biographer, who has spared none of his 
 failings, has admitted this fact. The cause of 
 his defects was too obvious to those who were fa- 
 miliar with him, to be overlooked ; they knew 
 that ill-health had an unfavourable influence on 
 his character, and that knowledge was sufficient 
 to shield his errors from inconsiderate censure, 
 and uncharitable severity.
 
 JOHNSON. 205 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 THERE are many invisible circumstances," 
 says the author of the Rambler, " which, 
 whether we read as inquirers after natural or 
 moral knowledge, whether we intend to enlarge 
 our science, or increase our virtue, are more 
 important than public occurrences. All the 
 plans and enterprises of De Witt are now of less 
 importance to the world, than that part of his 
 personal character which represents him as care- 
 ful of his health, and negligent of his life. 1 '
 
 206 JOHNSON. 
 
 There are three peculiarities in Johnson's 
 character which every one is aware of, his iras- 
 cibility, his superstition, and his fear of death ; 
 but there are very many acquainted with these 
 singular inconsistencies of so great a mind, who 
 are ignorant, or at least unobservant, of that 
 malady under which he laboured, from man- 
 hood to the close of life, the symptoms of which 
 disease are invariably those very moral infirmi- 
 ties of temper and judgment, which were his 
 well known defects. Few, indeed, are ignorant 
 that he was subject to great depression of spi- 
 rits, amounting almost to despair, but generally 
 speaking, the precise nature of his disorder, and 
 the extent of its influence over the mental fa- 
 culties, are very little considered. 
 
 There are a train of symptoms belonging to 
 a particular disease described by Cullen, and 
 amongst them it is worth while to consider
 
 JOHNSON. 207 
 
 whether the anomalies that have been alluded 
 to in the character of Johnson are to be disco- 
 vered. The following are Cullen's terms: 
 
 " A disposition to seriousness, sadness, and 
 timidity as to all future events, an apprehension 
 of the worst and most unhappy state of them, 
 and, therefore, often on slight grounds, an ap- 
 prehension of great evil. Such persons are 
 particularly attentive to the state of their own 
 health, to every the smallest change of feeling 
 in their bodies ; and from any unusual sensa- 
 tion, perhaps of the slightest kind, they appre- 
 hend great danger and even death itself. In 
 respect to these feelings and fears, there is com- 
 monly the most obstinate belief and persuasion. 11 
 It is needless to say, the disease that is spoken 
 of is hypochondria. Whether Johnson was its 
 victim, or whether the defects in his character 
 were original imperfections and infirmities, na-
 
 208 JOHNSON. 
 
 tural to his disposition, remains to be shown in 
 the following pages. 
 
 We have a few words to say of the nature of 
 hypochondria, which need not alarm the general 
 reader ; so little is known of any thing relative 
 to it besides its symptoms, that very little can 
 be said upon the subject. In the first place it 
 may be as well to acknowledge that the seat of 
 the disorder is unknown. Secondly, be the seat 
 where it may, the nature of the morbid action 
 that is going on, we likewise know not : and, 
 thirdly, that it is a disorder little under 
 the influence of medicine, almost all medical 
 authors do admit. These admissions, we ap- 
 prehend, bring the question to very narrow 
 limits, to limits which trench on the boundaries 
 of every literary man's estate : for, indeed, the 
 most important points left for consideration are 
 whether men of studious habits are more sub-
 
 JOHNSON. 209 
 
 ject than other men to this disorder; and if 
 more so, whether the moral infirmities of the 
 hypochondriac are entitled to more indulgence 
 than those of an individual who labours under 
 no such depressing ailment. 
 
 In proof of the first assertion, we have only 
 to say, that Hippocrates places the seat of the 
 disorder in the liver ; Boerhave in the spleen : 
 Hoffman in the stomach ; Sydenham in the ani- 
 mal spirits; Broussais in the intestines; and 
 Willis in the brain. In corroboration of the 
 second, we have but to adduce Sydenham, de- 
 scribing it as a disease of debility ; Dr. Wil- 
 son Phillip, as one of chronic inflammation; 
 and Dr. James Johnson, (and, perhaps, with 
 the most reason,) as one of morbid sensibility : 
 but, like tastes, there is no accounting for 
 theories. 
 
 For the truth of our last proposition, we ap-
 
 210 
 
 peal to general experience, for the confirmation 
 of the opinion, that time and temperance are the 
 two grand remedies of morbid melancholy. The 
 symptoms of hypochondria are generally pre- 
 ceded by those of indigestion, though not in 
 very many cases accompanied by them, and 
 not unfrequently do those of hypochondria de- 
 generate into one form or other of partial insa- 
 nity ; in short, hypochondria is the middle state 
 between the vapours of dyspepsia and the de- 
 lusions of monomania. One of the greatest 
 evils of this disorder is the injustice that the 
 invalid is exposed to from the common opinion 
 that it is the weakness of the sufferer, and not 
 the power of the disease, which makes his me- 
 lancholy " a thing of life apart ;" and the ne- 
 glect of exerting his volition, which enables it 
 to take possession of his spirits, and even of his 
 senses. His well meaning friends see no reason
 
 JOHNSON. 211 
 
 why he should deem himself either sick or sor- 
 rowful, when his physician can put his finger 
 on no one part of his frame, and say, ' Here is a 
 disease ;' or when the patient himself can point 
 out no real evil in his prospect, and say, < Here 
 is the cause of my dejection.' It is vain to tell 
 him his sufferings are imaginary, and must be 
 conquered by his reason, and that the shapes 
 of horror, and the sounds of terror, which haunt 
 and harass him by day and night, are engen- 
 dered in his brain, and are the effects of a cul- 
 pable indulgence in gloomy reveries. In his 
 better moments he himself knows that it is so, 
 but in spite of every exertion, those reveries do 
 come upon him ; and instead of receding from 
 the gulf they open beneath his feet, he feels 
 like a timid person standing on the verge of a 
 precipice, irresistibly impelled to fling himself 
 from the brink on which he totters. It is worse
 
 212 JOHNSON. 
 
 than useless to reason with him about the ab- 
 surdity of his conduct his temper is only irri- 
 tated : it is cruel to laugh at his delusions, or 
 to try to laugh him out of them his misery is 
 only increased by ridicule. 
 
 It may be very true, that he exaggerates 
 every feeling ; but, as Dr. James Johnson has 
 justly observed, " all his sensations are exag- 
 gerated, not by his voluntary act, but by the 
 morbid sensibility of his nerves, which he can- 
 not by any exertion of his mind prevent." 
 Raillery, remonstrance, the best of homilies, 
 the gravest of lectures, do not answer here ; the 
 argument must be addressed to the disordered 
 mind, through the medium of the stomach. A 
 well regulated regimen, and an aromatic ape- 
 rient may do more to remove the delusion of the 
 hypochondriac, than any thing that can be said, 
 preached, or prescribed to him.
 
 JOHNSON. 213 
 
 Indigestion is often one of the accompanying 
 symptoms of hypochondria ; but, as we have be- 
 fore remarked, it may be often wanting in the 
 severest forms of the disorder, yet there is great 
 reason to regard hypochondria in no other light 
 than that of an aggravated form of dyspepsia. 
 At all events there is no shape of this disease, 
 as Dr. J. Johnson has observed, which is not 
 aggravated by intemperance in diet, and not 
 mitigated by an abstemious regimen. Burton's 
 account of the horrors of hypochondria, is one 
 of the most graphic of all the descriptions of its 
 sufferings. "As the rain," saith Austin, 
 " penetrates the stone, so does this passion of 
 melancholy penetrate the mind. It commonly 
 accompanies men to their graves: physicians 
 may ease, but they cannot cure it ; it may lie 
 hid for a time, but it will return again, as vio- 
 lently as ever, on slight occasions as well
 
 214 JOHNSON. 
 
 as on casual excesses. Its humour is like 
 Mercury's weather-beaten statue, which had 
 once been gilt ; the surface was clean and uni- 
 form, but in the chinks there was still a rem- 
 nant of gold : and in the purest bodies, if once 
 tainted by hypochondria, there will be some 
 relics of melancholy still left, not so easily to 
 be rooted out. Seldom does this disease pro- 
 cure death, except (which is the most grievous 
 calamity of all) when these patients make away 
 with themselves a thing familiar enough 
 amongst them when they are driven to do vio- 
 lence to themselves to escape from present in- 
 sufferable pain. They can take no rest in the 
 night, or if they slumber, fearful dreams asto- 
 nish them, their soul abhorreth all meat, and 
 they are brought to death's door, being bound 
 in misery and in iron. Like Job, they curse 
 their stars, for Job was melancholy to despair,
 
 JOHNSON. 215 
 
 and almost to madness. They are weary of the 
 sun and yet afraid to die, vivere nolunt et mori 
 nesciunt. And then, like Esop's fishes, they 
 leap from the frying-pan into the fire, when 
 they hope to be eased by means of physic ; a 
 miserable end to the disease when ultimately 
 left to their fate by a jury of physicians furi- 
 ously disposed ; and there remains no more 
 to such persons, if that heavenly Physician, by 
 his grace and mercy, (whose aid alone avails,) 
 do not heal and help them. One day of such 
 grief as theirs, is as an hundred years : it is a 
 plague of the sense, a convulsion of the soul, 
 an epitome of hell ; : and if there be a hell upon 
 earth it is to be found in a melancholy man's 
 heart ! No bodily torture is like unto it, all 
 other griefs are swallowed up in this great 
 Euripus. I say of the melancholy man, he is 
 the cream and quintessence of human adversity.
 
 216 JOHNSON. 
 
 All other diseases are trifles to hypochondria ; it 
 is the pith and marrow of them all ! A melan- 
 choly man is the true Prometheus, bound to 
 Caucasus ; the true Tityus, whose bowels are 
 still devoured by a vulture. 11
 
 JOHNSON. 217 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 JOHNSON CONTINUED. 
 
 OUR attention was some time ago called to the 
 peculiarities of Johnson's malady, by an attack 
 which we heard made on his failings and infir- 
 mities by one of the greatest of our living poets : 
 and one of those literary ephemerae who flutter 
 round the light of learning. 
 
 We heard it asserted that Johnson " was far 
 behind the intelligence of his age ; that his mind 
 was so imbued with the legends of the nursery, 
 and the fables of superstition, that his belief ex- 
 tended to the visionary phantoms of both." In 
 
 VOL. I. I,
 
 218 JOHNSON. 
 
 short, that he had neither the heavenly armour 
 of religion, which is hope and confidence in the 
 goodness of the Deity nor the earthly shield 
 of honour, which is freedom of spirit and fear- 
 lessness of death. 
 
 The minor critic, with supercilious air, spoke 
 of the ferocious powers of the great bear 
 of learning, the unpresentable person of the 
 "respectable Hottentot," who had knocked down 
 his bookseller with one of his own folios. He 
 inveighed against the coarseness of his manners, 
 the tyranny of his conversation, and the un- 
 couthness of his appearance : had the present 
 been his day, he would hardly be tolerated in 
 good society. An author so ignorant of the 
 " lesser morals " as to be capable of thrusting 
 his fingers into a sugar-basin, of rolling about 
 his huge frame in company, to the great peril of 
 every thing around him, would certainly not be
 
 JOHNSON. 219 
 
 endured westward of Temple Bar ; and none 
 but Boswell could be mean enough to put up 
 with his vulgar arrogance. 
 
 We listened with patience so long as the bard 
 was disparaging his brother; but when the 
 minnow of literature had the audacity to assail 
 the Triton of erudition, to use an elegant Scot- 
 ticism our corruption rose, and though the 
 memory of the Doctor had been reviled no less by 
 the bard than the gentlemanjust spoken of, we 
 could not help expressing an opinion in an au- 
 dible voice, that it was something after all to 
 be torn to pieces by a lion, but to be gnawed to 
 death by a rat, was too loathsome a fate for 
 the worst malefactor. 
 
 That an author of the Doctor's outward man 
 and uncompromising manners would cut a very 
 sorry figure in Holland house, is very possible. 
 If Foscolo got into irretrievable disgrace for 
 
 L 2
 
 220 JOHNSON. 
 
 standing ona chair in the library to reach a 
 volume, how surely would the Doctor, by some 
 unhappy exploit, some sturdy opinion or unfor- 
 tunate disposition of his members, bring the 
 vengeance of offended patronage, and outraged 
 delicacy, on his head ! 
 
 v Nevertheless, Johnson was not behind the 
 intelligence of his age, though his manners 
 were uncompromising, his energy of character 
 oftentimes offensive, his person ungainly, 
 though his " local habitation " had been even 
 eastward of Temple Bar, and though his 
 
 "name" has become associated in some minds, 
 
 i 
 
 with the idea of a recondite savage. There is 
 something in the expression " uncouth appear- 
 ajice" which implies vulgarity, and therefore is it 
 that one like Pope, with a distorted figure, or 
 like Byron with a deformed foot, is less subject 
 to disagreeable observations, than one so " un-
 
 JOHNSON. 221 
 
 fashionably made up" as the great lexicographer. 
 The uncouthness of Johnson's appearance, how- 
 ever, was the effect of disease, and arose from 
 no natural imperfection : " his countenance," 
 Boswell tells us, " was naturally well formed, 
 till he unfortunately became afflicted with scro- 
 fula, which disfigured his features, and so in- 
 jured his visual nerves, that he completely lost 
 the sight of one of his eyes." Miss Seward 
 says, that "when at the free school, he ap- 
 peared a huge, over-grown, mis-shapen strip- 
 ling, but still a stupendous stripling, who even 
 at that early life maintained his opinions with 
 sturdy and arrogant fierceness." But the pic- 
 ture is overcharged, and is probably painted in 
 the colours of his subsequent character. At a 
 very early age he was attacked with a nervous 
 disorder which produced twitchings and convul- 
 sive motions of the limbs that continued during
 
 222 JOHNSON- 
 
 life, and which have been noticed and ridiculed 
 as eccentric habits, and tricks of gesture, that 
 he had accustomed himself to. Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds says, " these tricks of Dr. Johnson 
 proceeded from a habit which he had indulged 
 himself in, of accompanying his thoughts with 
 certain untoward actions, and those actions 
 always appeared to me as if they were meant 
 to reprobate some part of his past conduct. 11 
 An odd way certainly of reprobating it ; but 
 there is no occasion to refer these motions to so 
 mysterious an origin : the cause was unquestion- 
 ably the disorder of his nervous system. The 
 violence of his temper, and the gloom which 
 overcast his religious feelings throughout his 
 life, were no less evidently the effects of that 
 morbid irritability which ultimately became a 
 fixed and permanent hypochondria. " This 
 malady," says his biographer, " was long
 
 JOHNSOX. 223 
 
 lurking in his constitution, and to it may be 
 ascribed many of his peculiarities in after life : 
 they gathered such strength in his twentieth 
 year as to afflict him dreadfully. Before he 
 quitted Lichfield, he was overwhelmed with 
 his disorder, with perpetual fretfulness, and 
 mental despondency, which made existence mi- 
 serable. From this malady he never perfectly 
 recovered." 
 
 So great was the dejection of his spirits about 
 this period, that he described himself at times 
 as being unable to distinguish the hour upon 
 the town-clock. As he advanced in life this 
 depression increased in intensity, and differed 
 very little from the early symptoms of Cowper's 
 malady : the only difference was in the quality 
 of the minds which the disease had to prey 
 upon; the different powers of resistance of a 
 vigorous and a vacillating intellect. On one
 
 224 JOHNSOK. 
 
 occasion Johnson was found by Dr. Adams in a 
 deplorable condition, sighing, groaning, and 
 talking to himself, and restlessly walking from 
 room to room ; and when questioned about 
 his state, declaring " he would consent to have a 
 limb amputated to recover his spirits.' 1 
 
 The limits which separate melancholy from 
 madness were brought to so narrow a compass, 
 that had his malady advanced another step, it 
 is lamentable to think that its mastery over the 
 powerful mind of the sufferer would probably 
 have been permanent and complete. The tor- 
 tured instrument of reason was wound up to its 
 highest pitch, and nothing was wanting to 
 jangle the concord of its sweet sounds but an- 
 other impulse of his disorder. His peace was 
 wholly destroyed by doubts and terrors; he 
 speaks of his past life as a barren waste of his 
 time, with some disorders of body and disturb-
 
 JOHXSON. 225 
 
 ance of mind very near to madness. " His me- 
 lancholy," says Murphy, " was a constitutional 
 malady, derived, perhaps, from his father, who 
 was at times overcast with a gloom that bor- 
 dered on insanity." When to this is added, 
 that " Johnson, about the age of twenty, drew 
 up a description of his infirmities for Dr. S win- 
 fen, and received an answer to his letter, im- 
 porting that the symptoms indicated a future 
 privation of reason, who can doubt that an ap- 
 prehension of the worst calamity that can befall 
 humanity hung over his life, like the sword of 
 the tyrant suspended over his head ?" 
 
 No one, indeed, can wonder that this terrible 
 prognostic of insanity should cast its shadows 
 before all his future hopes of worldly happiness : 
 the only wonder is, that a physician could be 
 found so ignorant of the moral duties of his 
 calling, or so reckless of the feelings of a me- 
 
 L 5
 
 JOHNSON 
 
 lancholy man, as to implant the very notion in 
 his mind which it was his business to endeavour 
 to eradicate if already fixed there; namely, 
 that madness was to be the termination of his 
 disease. Was this doctor simple enough to 
 imagine, that there is anything in genius which 
 renders the intellect better able to support 
 prospective evil, or the undisguised prognosis 
 of a fearful malady, than the humble faculties 
 of an ordinary mind ? Simple indeed he would 
 be to think so, and little acquainted with human 
 nature. 
 
 But the error, we well know, is daily com- 
 mitted by the inexperienced, of supposing that 
 literary men are possessed of strength of mind 
 that may enable them to rise superior to the 
 fears and apprehensions of the common invalid, 
 and, consequently, that all reserve is to be laid 
 aside, and the real condition of such patients
 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 freely and fearlessly exhibited to their view. 
 This is a great mistake : the most powerful 
 talents are generally united with the acutest sen- 
 sibility, and in dealing with such cases the con- 
 siderate physician has to encourage, and not to 
 depress, the invalid: to temper candour with 
 delicacy; and firmness above all things, with 
 gentleness of manner, and even kindness of 
 heart. If it be essential in one disease more 
 than another for the physician to command the 
 confidence of his patient, to engage his respect, 
 and to convince him of the personal interest 
 that is taken in his health and well-being that 
 disease is morbid melancholy. 
 
 Johnson was wont to tell his friends, that he 
 inherited " a vile melancholy" from his father, 
 which made him " mad all his life or, at least, 
 not sober." Insanity was the constant terror of 
 his life ; the opinion of Dr. Swinfen haunted
 
 228 JOHNSON. 
 
 him like a spirit of evil wherever he went ; and 
 at the very period, as Boswell observes, when 
 he was giving the world proofs of no ordinary 
 vigour of understanding, he actually fancied 
 himself insane, or in a state, as nearly as possi- 
 ble, approaching to it. 
 
 Johnson's malady and Cowper's were pre- 
 cisely similar in the early period of each, as we 
 have before remarked ; the only difference was 
 in the strength of mind of either sufferer. 
 Cowper at once surrendered himself up to the 
 tyranny of his disorder, and took a pleasure in 
 parading the chains of his melancholy before 
 the eyes of his correspondents, even when " im- 
 muring himself at home in the infected atmo- 
 sphere of his own enthusiasm ;" while Johnson 
 struggled with his disease, sometimes indeed 
 in a spirit of ferocious independence, and very 
 seldom complained to his most intimate friends
 
 JOHNSON. 229 
 
 of his " humiliating malady." In no point was 
 the vigour of his intellect shown in so strong a 
 light as in this particular ; for in no malady is 
 there so great a disposition to complain of the 
 sufferings that are endured, and to over-state 
 their intensity, lest, by any possibility, they 
 should be under-rated by others.
 
 230 JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 JOHNSON CONTINUED. 
 
 JOHNSON'S disorder (if we may be allowed the 
 expression) had three phases, the character of 
 each of which distinguished a particular period 
 of his career, or rather predominated at a par- 
 ticular period, for it cannot be said that the 
 hues of each were not occasionally blended. 
 At twenty, however, his despondency was of a 
 religious kind : about forty-five " his melan- 
 choly was at its meridian," and then had the 
 shape of a fierce irritability, venting itself in
 
 JOHNSON. 231 
 
 irascibility of temper, and fits of capricious 
 arrogance. 
 
 O 'I 
 
 At the full period of " three-score years and 
 ten," the leading symptom of his hypochondria 
 was " the apprehension of death, and every day 
 appeared to aggravate his terrors of the grave." 
 This was " the black dog 1 ' that worried him to 
 the last moment. Metastasio, we are told, 
 never permitted the word death to be pro- 
 nounced in his presence; and Johnson was so 
 agitated by having the subject spoken of in his 
 hearing, that on one occasion he insulted Bos- 
 well for introducing the topic ; and in the words 
 of the latter, he had put "his head into the 
 lion's mouth a great many times with compara- 
 tive safety, but at last had it bitten off." 
 
 " For many years before his death," says 
 Arthur Murphy, " so terrible was the prospect 
 of death, that when he was not disposed to enter
 
 232 JOHNSON. 
 
 into the conversation that was going forward, 
 whoever sat near his chair might hear him re- 
 peating those lines of Shakspeare 
 
 " To die and go we know not where." 
 
 He acknowledged to Boswell he never had a 
 moment in which death was not terrible to him ; 
 and even at the age of sixty-nine he says he 
 had made no approaches to a state in which he 
 could look upon death without terror. 
 
 At seventy-five, we find him writing to his 
 friends to consult all the eminent physicians of 
 their acquaintance on his case. To his kind 
 and excellent physician, Dr. Brocklesby, he 
 writes, " I am loathe to think that I grow 
 worse, but cannot prove to my own partiality 
 that I grow much better. Pray be so kind as 
 to have me in your thoughts, and mention my
 
 JOHNSON. 233 
 
 case to others as you have opportunity." Bos- 
 well, at the same time, in Scotland, was employ- 
 ed in consulting the most eminent physicians of 
 that country for him. In his last illness, when 
 a friend of his told him he was glad to see him 
 looking better, Johnson seized him by the hand, 
 and exclaimed, " You are one of the kindest 
 friends I ever had. 11 It is curious to observe 
 with what sophistry he sometimes endeavoured 
 to persuade himself and others of the salutary 
 nature of his excessive terrors on this head : he 
 tells one friend that it is only the best men who 
 tremble at the thoughts of futurity, because 
 they are the most aware of the purity of that 
 place which they hope to reach. To another, 
 he writes that he never thought confidence with 
 respect to futurity, any part of the character of 
 a brave, a wise, or a good man. His executor, 
 Sir John Hawkins, who lets no opportunity
 
 234 JOHNSON. 
 
 pass to blacken his character, speaks of his fear 
 of death in terms which imply some crime of 
 extraordinary magnitude weighing on his heart ; 
 it was with difficulty, he says, he could persuade 
 him to execute a will, apparently as if he feared 
 his doing so would hasten his dissolution. Three 
 or four days before his death, he declared he 
 would give one of his legs for a year more of 
 life. When the Rev. Mr. Sastres called upon 
 him, Johnson stretched forth his hand, and ex- 
 claimed in a melancholy tone, " Jam mori- 
 turus!" But the ruling passion of his disease 
 was still strong in death ; for at his own sugges- 
 tion, when his surgeon was making slight inci- 
 sions in his legs with the idea of relieving his 
 dropsical disorder, Johnson cried out, "Deeper, 
 deeper; I want length of life, and you are 
 afraid of giving me pain, which I do not value." 
 " On the very last day of his existence," says
 
 JOHNSON. 235 
 
 Murphy, " the desire of life returned with 
 all its former vehemence ; he still imagined that 
 by puncturing his legs relief might be obtained. 
 At eight in the morning he tried the experi- 
 ment, but no water followed." If Johnson's fear 
 of death were not the effect of disease, it would 
 be impossible to contemplate his conduct either 
 in sickness or in sorrow, in his closet or on his 
 death-bed, without feelings of absolute disgust. 
 What other sentiment could be entertained 
 
 " For him who crawls enamoured of decay, 
 Clings to his couch, and sickens years away," 
 
 and shudders at the breath of every word which 
 reminds him of the grave ? The bravest man 
 that ever lived may not encounter death with- 
 out fear, nor the best Christian envisage eter- 
 nity with unconcern; but there is a differ- 
 ence between the feelings of either, and the
 
 236 JOHNSON. 
 
 slavish terrors of a coward in extremity. There 
 is a distinction, moreover, which is still more 
 worthy of observation the wide distinction be- 
 tween the fear of death that springs from an in- 
 herent baseness of disposition, and that appre- 
 hension of it which arises from the depressing 
 influence of a disease. Who can doubt that 
 Johnson's morbid feelings on this point were 
 occasioned by hypochondria ? and what medical 
 man, at least, is not aware that the fear of death 
 is as inseparable a companion of hypochondria 
 as preternatural heat is a symptom of fever ? 
 
 We have now a few observations to make on 
 the subject of Johnson's superstition ; and we 
 preface them with an observation of Melanc- 
 thon, which deserves the attention of all lite- 
 rary men. " Melancholy," (says this amiable 
 man, who had been himself its victim,) "is so fre- 
 quent and troublesome a disease, that it is ne-
 
 JOHNSON. 237 
 
 cessary for every body to know its accidents, 
 and a dangerous thing to be ignorant of them." 
 One of these " accidents " is to confound the 
 ideas of possible occurrences with those of pro- 
 bable events a disposition to embody the phan- 
 toms of imagination, to clothe visions of enthu- 
 thiasm in forms cognizable to the senses, and fa- 
 miliar to the sight; in short, to give to " airy 
 nothings a local habitation and a name." 
 
 This disposition was the secret of Rousseau's 
 phantom that scarcely ever quitted him for a 
 day ; of Luther's demons, with whom he com- 
 muned in the solitude of his study; of Cow- 
 per's messenger, bearing the sentence of eternal 
 reprobation ; of Tasso's spirits gliding on a 
 sunbeam; of Mozart's " man in black," the 
 harbinger of death, who visited his dwelling a 
 few days before his decease ; and of Johnson's 
 belief in the existence of ghosts, and the minis-
 
 238 JOHNSON. 
 
 tering agency of departed spirits. His senti- 
 ments on these subjects, though expressed in a 
 work of fiction, are well known to have been his 
 deliberate opinions. " That the dead are seen 
 no more I will not undertake to maintain 
 against the concurrent and unvaried testimony 
 of all ages and of all nations. There are no 
 people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions 
 of the dead are not related or believed. This 
 opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human 
 nature is diffused, could become universal only 
 by its truth." 
 
 This is the language of the hypochondriac, 
 not of the moralist, who in the exercise of a 
 sober judgment must have known that the con- 
 current testimony of all experience and philo- 
 sophy was opposed to the opinion that those 
 who are once buried are seen again in this 
 world.
 
 JOHNSON. 239 
 
 There are many of what are called the pe- 
 culiarities of Johnson's superstition, which ex- 
 cite surprise, but are not generally known to be 
 the characteristic symptoms of hypochondria. 
 *' He had one peculiarity," says Boswell, " of 
 which none of his friends ever ventured to ask 
 an explanation. This was an anxious care to 
 go out or in at a door, or passage, by a certain 
 number of steps from a certain point, so as that 
 either his right or left foot, I forget which, 
 should constantly make the first actual move- 
 ment. Thus, upon innumerable occasions I 
 have seen him suddenly stop, and then seem to 
 count his steps with deep earnestness, and when 
 he had neglected, or gone wrong, in this sort of 
 magical movement, I have seen him go back 
 again, put himself in a proper posture to begin 
 the ceremony, and having gone through it,
 
 240 JOHNSON. 
 
 break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and 
 
 join his companion." " Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 
 has observed him go a long way about rather 
 than cross a particular alley." His piety, we 
 are told by Murphy, in some instances bordered 
 on superstition, that he thought it not more 
 strange that there should be evil spirits than evil 
 men ; and even that the question of second 
 sight held him in suspense. He was likewise 
 in the habit of imposing on himself voluntary 
 penance for every little defect, going through 
 the day with only one cup of tea without milk, 
 and at other time abstaining from animal food. 
 He appears likewise to have had a superstitious 
 notion of the efficacy of repeating a detached 
 sentence of a prayer over and over, somewhat 
 in the manner of a Turkish devotee, who limits 
 himself daily to the repetition of a particular
 
 JOHNSTON. 241 
 
 verse of the Koran. " His friend, Mr. Davies," 
 says Boswell, " of whom Churchill says, ' that 
 Davies hath a very pretty wife,' when Johnson 
 began his repetition of ' lead us not into tempta- 
 tion,' used to whisper Mrs. Davies, * you, my 
 dear, are the cause of this.' " Many of these 
 habits, however, if they were weaknesses, were 
 the weaknesses of a pious and a good man, and 
 were the result of early religious impressions, 
 instilled into his mind by his mother " with as- 
 siduity," but, in his opinion, "not with judg- 
 ment. 11 Sunday, he said, was a heavy day to 
 him : when he was a boy he was confined on 
 that day to the perusal of the Whole Duty of 
 Man, from a great part of which he could de- 
 rive no instruction. " A boy," he says, " should 
 be introduced to such books by having his at- 
 tention directed to the arrangement, to the style, 
 and other excellencies of composition ; that the 
 VOL. i. M
 
 242 JOHNSON. 
 
 mind being thus engaged by an amusing variety 
 of objects, may not grow weary." Be this as 
 it may, his superstitious notions and obser- 
 vances were encouraged, if not caused, by his 
 disease.
 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 JOHNSON CONTINUED. 
 
 THE indefatigable Burton has ransacked all me- 
 dical authorities, ancient and modern, for the 
 symptoms of hypochondria ; and amongst those 
 he has enumerated there is not one of Johnson's 
 miscalled peculiarities, which is not to be found. 
 " Many of these melancholy men," says Bur- 
 ton, " are sad, and not fearful some fearful 
 and not sad." (Johnson, for instance, groan- 
 ing in his chamber, as Dr. Adams found him, 
 and at another period knocking down a book- 
 
 M 2
 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 seller in his own shop.) " Some fear death, and 
 yet, in a contrary humour, make away with 
 themselves." (Johnson, indeed, did not commit 
 suicide, but his fear of death was never sur- 
 passed.) " Others are troubled with scruples of 
 conscience, distrusting God's mercies, thinking 
 the devil will have them, and making great la- 
 mentations." (Similar qualms and apprehen- 
 sions harassed the doctor to his latest hour.) 
 "' One durst not walk alone from home for fear 
 he should swoon or die." (The terror of such 
 an occurrence probably contributed to confine 
 the great moralist for so many years to his be- 
 loved Fleet Street.) " A second fears all old 
 women as witches, and every black dog or cat 
 he sees he suspecteth to be a devil." (Whether 
 he believed in the witchery of old women, or 
 young, we know not, but he was unwilling how- 
 ever to deny their power, and the black dog
 
 JOHNSON. 245 
 
 that worried him at home was the demon of hy- 
 pochondria.) " A third dares not go over a 
 bridge, or come near a pool, rock, or steep 
 hill." (Johnson dared not pass a particular 
 alley in Leicester Square.) " The terror of 
 some particular death troubles others they are 
 troubled in mind as if they had committed a 
 murder." (The constant dread of insanity we 
 have already noticed, and the construction put 
 on his expressions of remorse by Sir John Haw- 
 kins.) " Some look as if they had just come 
 out of the den of Trophonius, and though they 
 laugh many times, and look extraordinary 
 merry, yet are they extremely lumpish again in 
 a minute ; dull and heavy, semel et simul, sad 
 and merry, but most part sad." (The den of 
 Trophonius was his gloomy abode in Bolt Court, 
 whence he sallied forth at night-fall, on his 
 visit to the Mitre, and the gaiety and gloom
 
 246 JOHNSON. 
 
 have a parallel in the state of his spirits when 
 at the university, such as extorted the melan- 
 choly denial to Dr. Adams of having been " a 
 gay and frolicsome fellow" at college " O, sir, 
 I was mad, and violent, but it was bitterness 
 which they mistook for frolic.") " Yet, for all 
 this," continues Burton, summing up his ac- 
 count of the " madness of melancholy," in the 
 words of an old author, "in all these things 
 these people may be wise, staid, discreet, and do 
 nothing unbeseeming their dignity, place, or 
 person this foolish and ridiculous fear ex- 
 cepted, which continually tortures and crucifies 
 their souls." 
 
 The habits of Dr. Johnson were most un- 
 favourable to health he was a late riser, a 
 large eater, indolent and inactive. In the in- 
 tervals of his disorder he laboured for a time to 
 counteract the effects of these habits, and he so
 
 JOHNSON. 247 
 
 far succeeded in controlling his disease as to be 
 able to divert those distressing thoughts, which 
 it was a folly, he said, to combat with. To 
 think them down, he told Boswell, was impos- 
 sible, but to acquire the power of managing the 
 mind he looked upon as an art, that might be 
 attained in a great degree by experience and 
 exercise. "Upon the first attack of his dis- 
 order," says Boswell, "he strove to overcome it 
 by forcible exertion, and frequently walked to 
 Birmingham and back again, and tried many 
 other expedients, but all in vain ; his expression 
 to me was, ' I did not then know how to manage 
 my disorder.' " One of the ways he proposed 
 accomplishing this end was by continually oc- 
 cupying his mind, without fatiguing it, either 
 by dav, repeating certain words, in counting 
 a certain number of steps ; or at night, when 
 wakefully disturbed, by burning a lamp in his
 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 bed-room, taking a book, and thus composing 
 himself to rest. His grand precept was, " if 
 you are idle be not solitary, if you are soli- 
 tary be not idle." The great secret, however, 
 of this management of mind appears to have 
 been a periodical fit of abstinence, persevered 
 in so long as the violence of any new attack of 
 his malady was upon him. He was far from 
 temperate in the pleasures of the table ; he 
 could drink his three bottles of wine, he says, 
 and not be the worse for it ; the capacity of his 
 stomach we doubt not, but its invulnerability is 
 very questionable. The doctor, like the " great 
 child of honour," was a "man of an unbounded 
 stomach." Generally speaking, he fed grossly; 
 he even boasted of his veneration for good liv- 
 ing, and spoke of " one unmindful of his belly 
 as likely to be unmindful of every thing else." 
 He sometimes talked with contempt 6f peo-
 
 JOHNSON. 249 
 
 pie gratifying their palates. Yet, when at table, 
 Boswell says, " he was totally absorbed in the 
 business of the moment ; his looks were rivetted 
 to his plate, nor would he hardly speak a word, 
 or pay any attention to what was said by others 
 till he had satisfied his appetite, which was so 
 fierce, and indulged with such intenseness, that 
 while in the act of eating, the veins of his fore- 
 head swelled, and the perspiration on his fea- 
 tures was visible." Nothing could induce him 
 to go to an evening conversazione, where there 
 were no refreshments. " It will never do, sir ; a 
 man does not like to go to a place from which 
 he comes out exactly as he went in." There 
 can be very little doubt but that he aggravated 
 his disorder by improper living, and drank more 
 Port wine than was likely to be of service to a 
 man of sedentary habits this was his favourite 
 potation. "Bordeaux was a wine," he said, "in 
 
 M 5
 
 250 JOHNSON. 
 
 which a man might be drowned before it made 
 him drunk ; no claret for me, sir poor stuff 
 it is the liquor for boys ; Port is the drink for 
 men." 
 
 At fifty, however, his increasing ailments 
 obliged him to give up wine altogether for near 
 twenty years, but at the age of seventy-two he 
 returned again to the use of it. " Still every 
 thing about his character, 11 says Boswell, " was 
 forcible and violent, there never was any mode- 
 ration ; many a day did he fast, many a day did 
 he refrain from wine ; but when he did eat, it 
 was voraciously when he did drink, it was co- 
 piously." During the period that he abstained 
 from wine, he betook himself to the use of tea, 
 but he was as intemperate a tea-drinker, as 
 he had been formerly a wine-bibber. " The 
 quantities," says Boswell, '* which he drank of 
 it at all hours was so great, that his nerves must
 
 JOHNSON. 251 
 
 have been uncommonly strong not to have been 
 extremely relaxed by such an immoderate use of 
 it." But, perhaps, one of the most injurious of 
 his habits was the late hours, at all periods of 
 his life, that he was in the habit of keeping. 
 Like all hypochondriacs, he was a bad sleeper, 
 and when sleepless he was accustomed, to use 
 his own words, " to read in bed like a Turk" 
 not one of the doctor's happiest similies : by the 
 way the Turk neither reads in bed nor out of 
 it. In one of her letters, he says, " his life, 
 from his earliest years, was wasted in a morning 
 bed." " He has been often heard to relate,"" we 
 are told by Murphy, "that he and Savage 
 walked round Grosvenor Square till four in the 
 morning ; in the course of their conversation re- 
 forming the world, &c. until fatigued at length 
 they began to feel the want of refreshment, but 
 could not muster more than four-pence half-
 
 252 JOHNSON. 
 
 penny ." There is a trifling inaccuracy in this 
 account ; St. James's, and not Grosvenor Square 
 was the scene of their nocturnal ramble. Poor 
 Savage has been unjustly charged with being 
 the cause of all the doctor's disorders, but at 
 the age of forty-three we find him as disposed 
 as ever for a ramble at unseasonable hours. 
 On one occasion Beauclerk and Langton rapped 
 him up at three in the morning, to prevail on 
 him to accompany them. " The doctor," says 
 Boswell, "made his appearance in his shirt, 
 with his little black wig on the top of his head 
 instead of a night-cap, and a poker in his hand, 
 imagining that some ruffians had come to attack 
 him ; when he discovered who they were, and 
 what their errand, he smiled with great good 
 humour and agreed to their proposal. " What ! 
 is it you, you dogs ! I'll have a frisk with you." 
 These habits, and the excesses they led to, were
 
 JOHNSON. 253 
 
 the fuel which fed his hypochondria ; his occa- 
 sional abstinence the damper which every now 
 and then controlled its fury. 
 
 On his first arrival in London, abstemious- 
 ness was forced upon him by poverty, and in all 
 probability it was his temperance at that critical 
 period of his disorder that enabled him to lay 
 in a stock of bodily vigor which he might not 
 have otherwise possessed. The man who could 
 style himself Impransus, in his application to a 
 publisher, or who was so reduced as to be ar- 
 rested for a debt of five pounds, for the com- 
 mon necessaries of life, could not have been 
 very luxurious in his living. Yet this was one 
 of "the sweet uses of adversity," he might 
 then have little dreamt of, for the necessary 
 abstemiousness he then practised, gave his con- 
 stitution time] to repair its shattered energies, and 
 to invigorate him for a long and arduous cam-
 
 254 JOHNSOX. 
 
 paign in the literary world. Subsequently, 
 when the gloom of his disorder drove him into 
 company to escape from the tyranny of his own 
 sad thoughts, he contracted habits of convivia- 
 lity, and to use one of his own grandiloquent 
 terms, of gulosity, which rendered his vigils 
 not only pleasing to the rosy god, but his taste 
 for the good things of the table, a passion which 
 " a whole synod of cooks " could hardly gratify. 
 Poor Boswell complained that he was half 
 killed with his irregularities in the Doctor's 
 company. Port, and late hours with Johnson, 
 had ruined his nerves ; but his friend consoled 
 him with the assurance that it was better to be 
 palsied at eighteen, than not keep company 
 with such a man. 
 
 Quo ad vinum, Johnson loved his wine pro- 
 bably, better than Burns did his whiskey ; our 
 great moralist loved it for its flavour, but the
 
 JOHNSON. 255 
 
 unfortunate bard liked it for its effects. The 
 one flew to it for enjoyment, the other for relief ; 
 it was the difference between food and physic 
 between mirth and madness. The power of 
 abstaining from " the inordinate cup that is 
 unblessed" contrasts the vigor of Johnson's 
 mind with the lamentable weakness of Burns : 
 the one could not abstain for a single day, 
 while the other could give up his for wine twenty 
 years, although he seemed to think not a little 
 of the deprivation. It was a great deduction, 
 he told Boswell, from the pleasures of life, 
 not to drink wine.
 
 256 JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 JOHNSON CONTINUED. 
 
 His health began to break down about fifteen 
 years before his death. " In 1766, his constitu- 
 tion," says Murphy, " seemed to be in a rapid 
 decline, and that morbid melancholy which 
 often clouded his understanding, came upon 
 him with a deeper gloom than ever. Mr. and 
 Mrs. Thrale paid him a visit in this situation, 
 and found him on his knees with a clergyman, 
 beseeching God to continue to him the vise of 
 his understanding." From this period to his 
 seventy-third year his fits of melancholy were
 
 JOHNSON. 257 
 
 frequent and severe, though he continued to go 
 into society as before ; but lively as his conver- 
 sation was at all times, his gaiety, he said, was 
 all on the outside. " I may be cracking my 
 jokes, and yet cursing the sun sun, how I 
 hate thy beams !" 
 
 In 1782, he complains of being "afflicted 
 with a very irksome and severe disorder, that 
 his respiration was impeded, and much blood 
 had been taken away." His disorder was asth- 
 ma : it appears that he was repeatedly blooded 
 for it, and subsequently the only relief he could 
 obtain was by the daily use of opium to the 
 extent of three or four grains. The propriety 
 of this bleeding, at the age of seventy- three, 
 for a spasmodic malady, which was capable of 
 being relieved by opium, is more than ques- 
 tionable ; there can, indeed, be very little doubt
 
 258 JOHNSON. 
 
 that it was fatal to the powers of his constitu- 
 tion, and that the palsy and dropsy which very 
 soon ensued, were the effects of the debility so 
 great a loss of blood occasioned. The diseases 
 of old men whose vital energies have been 
 expended in literary pursuits are seldom to be 
 remedied by the lancet, and when employed 
 in such cases, it is very often " the little 
 instrument of mighty mischief," which Reid has 
 termed it. About a year after his first attack 
 of asthma, during which time he was frequently 
 bled for the disorder, he was seized with para- 
 lysis, that malady which literary men, more than 
 any others, have reason to guard against. The 
 vigor of his great mind was manifested on this 
 occasion in communicating the intelligence of 
 his calamity to one of his friends. A few hours 
 only after his attack, while he was deprived of
 
 JOHNSOX. 259 
 
 speech, and of the power of moving from his 
 bed, he so far triumphed over his infirmities 
 as to write to Dr. Taylor the following 
 account of his condition. " It has pleased God, 
 by a paralytic stroke in the night, to deprive 
 me of speech. I am very desirous of Dr. He- 
 berden's assistance, as I think my case is not 
 past remedy. Let me see you as soon as it 
 is possible; bring Dr. Heberden with you, if 
 you can; but come yourself, at all events. I 
 am glad you are so well, when I am so dread- 
 fully attacked. I think that by a speedy ap- 
 plication of stimulants, much may be done. 
 I question if a vomit, vigorous and rough, 
 would not rouse the organs of speech to action. 
 As it is too early to send, I will try to recol- 
 lect what I can that may be suspected to have 
 brought on this dreadful disease. I have
 
 been accustomed to bleed frequently for an 
 asthmatic complaint, but have forborne some 
 time by Dr. Pepy's persuasion, who perceived 
 my legs beginning to swell." 
 
 How strongly is the powerful intellect of 
 Johnson, (yet unimpaired by his disorder,) 
 shewn in these few emphatic words ! The ur- 
 gency of the case, the necessity for prompt 
 assistance, and the consciousness of the debi- 
 lity that had been brought on his constitution 
 by so much depletion ; and yet what extra- 
 ordinary ignorance of the common principles of 
 medicine is exhibited in the remedial plan he 
 proposes for his relief ! The merest Tyro in 
 the medical art would have seen nothing in the 
 administration of the vomit vigorous and rough, 
 but the prospect of aggravated danger, of in- 
 creased determination to the head, and even of
 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 sudden death, though he might be aware that 
 
 such a remedy had the sanction of some recent 
 
 ,i ., . 
 authorities. 
 
 The treatment of diseases is not, however, 
 the subject we have to do with ; we have only 
 noticed a circumstance which proves how very 
 ignorant of the principles of medicine, and of 
 the nature of a disease which literary men are 
 especially subject to, the most learned persons 
 are frequently found to be. 
 
 Johnson survived his attack of paralysis a 
 year and a half, during which time he laboured 
 under a complication of disorders, gout, asthma, 
 and dropsy, which rendered his life miserable, 
 but yet did not prevent him from performing a 
 journey to his native town, and from engaging 
 on his return in his literary pursuits. 
 
 Johnson was one of those few fortunate chil- 
 dren of genius who have not to complain of the
 
 262 JOHNSON. 
 
 tardy justice of their times : his great merit in 
 his lifetime was universally acknowledged, and 
 public as well as private admiration and grati- 
 tude were not limited to the justice that his me- 
 mory was entitled to, but were displayed in 
 acts of generosity that were calculated to reward 
 the exertions of the living man, and to increase 
 his comforts in sickness and distress. There was 
 no subscription at his death for the purchase of 
 his Bolt-court tenement, to bestow on Mrs. Lucy 
 Porter, of Lichfield, and her descendants there 
 was no appeal made to the pockets of the public 
 for the erection of a pillar to perpetuate his 
 fame ; but the bounty of his sovereign was ex- 
 tended to him in his indigence, and in the hour 
 of sickness the beneficent hand of private friend- 
 ship and of public benevolence was held forth 
 to him. When there was a question of enabling 
 him to visit Italy for the recovery of his health,
 
 JOHNSON. 263 
 
 Lord Thurlow, we are told, offered five hun- 
 dred pounds to meet the expenses of his jour- 
 ney ; and his amiable physician, Dr. Brocklesby, 
 signified his intention of adding a hundred 
 a-year to his income for life, in order that he 
 might not want the means of giving to the re- 
 mainder of his days tranquillity and comfort. 
 The conduct of Brocklesby was worthy of the 
 just and elegant compliment which Johnson 
 paid to his profession, in his life of Garth. 
 " I believe every man has found in physicians 
 great liberality and dignity of sentiment, very 
 prompt effusions of beneficence, and willingness 
 to exert a lucrative art where there is no hope 
 of lucre." 
 
 Johnson continued to struggle with his com- 
 plaints till the latter part of 1784. His earnest 
 and constant prayer, that he might be per- 
 mitted to deliver up his soul unclouded to God,
 
 264 JOHNSON. 
 
 was granted; he died in his perfect senses, re- 
 signed to his situation, at peace with himself 
 and in charity with all men, in his seventy-fifth 
 year. 
 
 The circumstances that we have noticed, con- 
 nected with the disorder of this great and good 
 man, are amply sufficient to show that the many 
 striking inconsistencies and eccentricities in his 
 character and conduct, were occasioned by dis- 
 ease, or fostered by its influence. His original 
 disorder, it is evident, was a scrofulous affec- 
 tion, which in early life debilitated his consti- 
 tution, and gave that predisposition to hypo- 
 chondria which dogged his whole career. 
 
 Hahneman, one of the best observers of dis- 
 ease (whatever his character as a pharmaceutical 
 theorist may be) that medical science has to boast 
 of, attributes half the disorders of humanity to a 
 scrofulous or scorbutic taint in the constitution,
 
 JOHNSON. 265 
 
 and that such a taint is calculated to nurture 
 and develope the seeds of an hereditary dis- 
 ease like that of Johnson's hypochondria, there 
 can be little doubt. At all events, if proof 
 were requisite, we trust sufficient has been ad- 
 duced to show that Johnson's failings were 
 largely influenced by the infirmities of disease, 
 and were foreign to the original complexion of 
 his disposition and the character of his noble 
 nature. 
 
 VOL. i.
 
 266 BURNS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 BURNS. 
 
 EVERY quarter of a century a revolution takes 
 place in literary taste, the old idols of its wor- 
 ship are displaced for newer effigies, but the 
 ancient altars are only overthrown to be re-esta- 
 blished at some future time, and to receive the 
 homage which they forfeited, on account of the 
 fickleness of their votaries, and not in conse- 
 quence of any demerits of their own. 
 
 It is not in the nature of Burns' productions 
 that his fame should altogether set aside the
 
 BURNS. 267 
 
 remembrance of his follies ; yet so ably and so 
 philosophically has his biographer discharged 
 his duty to the public and to the individual, 
 whose genius he helped to immortalize, and so 
 truly, in the spirit of a philosophical historian, 
 has he traced the infirmities of Burns to their 
 real origin, that were it only for the noble effort 
 to vindicate the character of genius, Currie's 
 life of Burns would still deserve to be consi- 
 dered one of the best specimens of biography in 
 the English language. And so long as its ex- 
 cellence had the freshness of a new performance 
 to recommend it to the public, and to lay hold 
 of its attention, the character of Burns was 
 treated with indulgence, and his poetry was 
 duly and justly appreciated. 
 
 But of late years there has been a tendency, 
 in literary opinion, to underrate the merits of 
 the Scottish bard, and even to exaggerate the 
 
 N 2
 
 268 BURNS. 
 
 failings of the man. The vulgarity of his errors 
 and his unfortunate predilection for pipes and 
 punch-bowls, it is incumbent on every sober 
 critic to reprobate. Byron, who in his aristocra- 
 tic mood, had no notion of a poor man " holding 
 the patent of his honours direct from God Al- 
 mighty," could not tolerate the addiction of a 
 ^*ard to such ungentlemanly habits, and Burns 
 was, therefore, in the eyes of the proud lord, a 
 " strange compound of dirt and deity;" but his 
 lordship, at the time of the observation, was in 
 one of his fits of outrageous abstinence, and to 
 use his own language, " had no more charity 
 than a vinegar cruet." 
 
 Bulwer has also lately joined in depreciating 
 the poor exciseman. It is the more to be re- 
 gretted, as he has the credit of possessing more 
 generosity of literary feelings, and less of the 
 jealousy of genius than most of his compeers.
 
 BURNS. 269 
 
 Burns' fame has certainly declined in the 
 fashionable world; but if it be any consolation 
 to his spirit, his poetry continues as popular as 
 ever with the poor. Its exquisite pathos has 
 lost nothing of its original charm, but no vo- 
 lume is less the book of the boudoir the fas- 
 tidious imagination can hardly associate the idea 
 of poetry with that of an atmosphere that is re- 
 dolent of tobacco smoke and spirituous liquors. 
 
 The frailties of Burns are unfortunately too 
 glaring to admit of palliation ; but manifest as 
 they are, much misapprehension we are per- 
 suaded prevails as to their character; a dog 
 with a bad name is not in greater peril of a 
 halter, than a poor man's errors are in danger 
 of exciting unmitigated disgust. 
 
 In fashionable morality it is one thing to 
 drink the " inordinate cup that is unblessed" 
 of claret or champagne, but quite another to
 
 270 BURNS. 
 
 " put an enemy into the mouth to steal away 
 the senses 1 ' in the shape of whiskey ; similar 
 effects may arise from both, but the odium is 
 not a little in the quality, and not the quantity, 
 of the potation. In the parlance of convivial 
 gentlemen, to have a bout at the Clarendon is 
 to exceed in the pleasures of the table ; but to 
 commit the same excess in a country ale-house, 
 is to be in a state of disgusting intoxication. 
 There is no question, however, but that wine is 
 a " more gentlemanly tipple" than any kind of 
 ardent spirits, and that its intoxicating effect is 
 an " amabilis insanicf of a milder character 
 than the " rabia furibunda" which belongs to 
 the latter. The excesses of the wine-bibber, 
 moreover, are generally few and far between, 
 while those of the dram-drinker are frequent, 
 and infinitely more injurious to mind and body. 
 In this country the poor man is debarred the
 
 BURNS. 271 
 
 use of wine ; spirits are unfortunately the 
 cheaper stimulant ; but were it a matter of 
 choice, he might prefer the former, as well as 
 the French and Italian peasant. 
 
 There is one circumstance, however, which 
 deserves consideration in forming any compara- 
 tive estimate of intemperate habits. Different 
 constitutions are differently effected by the 
 same excitants. Johnson could boast of drink- 
 ing his three bottles of Port wine with im- 
 punity; but the Doctor's was an " orrmi 
 vorantia gula" Dr. Parr could master two 
 without any inconvenience, but probably had 
 Burns dined with either of them, he would 
 have found the half of a Scotch pint might 
 have caused him in the morning " to have 
 remembered a mass of things, but nought 
 distinctly," and to conclude he had been drink- 
 ing the u mnum erroris ab ebriis doctoribus pro-
 
 272 BURNS. 
 
 pinatum" as St. Austin denominates another 
 inebriating agent. The sin of intemperance is 
 certainly the same whether it be caused by 
 one bottle or three, or whether the alcohol 
 be concentrated in one form, or more largely 
 diluted in another. 
 
 In Burns' time intemperance was much more 
 common in his walk of life than it now is. In 
 Pope's day, we find not a few of his most 
 celebrated contemporaries and immediate pre- 
 decessors addicted to drunkenness. " Cowley's 
 death (Pope says) was occasioned by a mean 
 accident while his great friend Dean Pratt was 
 on a visit with him at Chertsey. They had 
 been together to see a neighbour of Cowley's, 
 who, (according to the fashion of the times,) 
 made them too welcome. They did not set out 
 on their walk home till it was too late, and had 
 drank so deep, that they lay out in the fields all
 
 BUKNS. 273 
 
 night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried 
 him off." 
 
 Dry den, like Burns, was remarkable for 
 sobriety in early life, " but for the last ten 
 years of his life, (says Denis,) he was much 
 acquainted with Addison, and drank with him 
 even more than he ever used to do, probably so 
 far as to hasten his end." Yet in his case, as 
 Byron's, wine seems to have had no exhilarating 
 influence. Speaking of his melancholy, he 
 says, " Nor wine nor love could make me gay." 
 And Byron speaks of wine making him " sa- 
 vage instead of mirthful." 
 
 Parnell, also, (on Pope's authority,) *' was a 
 great follower of drams, and strangely open and 
 scandalous in his debaucheries, (his excesses, 
 however, only commenced after the death of his 
 wife, whom he tenderly loved,) and "those 
 helps," lie adds, that sorrow first called in for 
 
 N5
 
 274 BURNS. 
 
 assistance, habit soon rendered necessary, and he 
 died in his thirty-sixth year, in some measure a 
 martyr to conjugal fidelity, somewhat we pre- 
 sume in the way 
 
 " Of Lord Mount-Coffee-house, the British peer, 
 Who died of love with wine last year." 
 
 But another account describes ParnelPs taking 
 to drunkenness on account of his prospect 
 declining as a preacher at the queen's death, 
 " and so he became a sot, and finished his 
 existence." 
 
 Churchill was found drunk on a dung-hill. 
 
 Prior, according to Spenser, "used to bury 
 nimself for whole days and nights together 
 with a poor mean creature, his celebrated Chloe," 
 who, unlike Ronsard's Cassandra, was the bar- 
 maid of the house he frequented. And even
 
 BURNS. 275 
 
 Pope, we are told by Dr. King, hastened his 
 end by drinking spirits. 
 
 Precedents, however, are no plea for crime, 
 and to multiply them would be useless for any 
 other purpose than to deprecate the infliction of 
 an excessive penalty in a single instance, be- 
 cause the latest though not perhaps the most 
 enormous. 
 
 If Burns' irregularity deserved the name of 
 habitual intemperance, it was only during the 
 latter years of his life. Till his three-and- 
 twentieth year, he was remarkable for his so- 
 briety, no less than for the modesty of his 
 behaviour. Had he continued at the plough, 
 in all probability he would have remained a 
 stranger to the vices that his new career un- 
 fortunately led him into. It was only, (he tells 
 us,) when he became an author, that he got 
 accustomed to excess, and when his friends made 
 him an exciseman, that his casual indulgence in
 
 276 
 
 BURNS. 
 
 convivial pleasures acquired the dominion of 
 a settled habit. 
 
 In early life he laboured under a disorder 
 of the stomach, accompanied by palpitations of 
 the heart, depression of the spirits, and nervous 
 pains in the head, the nature of which he 
 never appears to have understood, but which 
 evidently arose from dyspepsia. These suffer- 
 ings, be it remembered, are complained of in his 
 letters years before he had committed any 
 excess ; and so far from being the consequence of 
 intemperance, as they are generally considered 
 to have been, the exhaustion they produced was 
 probably the cause which drove him in his 
 moments of hypochondria, to the excitement of 
 the bottle for a temporary palliation of his 
 symptoms. 
 
 No one but a dyspeptic man, who is ac- 
 quainted with the moral martyrdom of the dis- 
 ease, can understand the degree of exhaustion
 
 BURNS, 277 
 
 to which the mind is reduced, and the insup- 
 portable sense of sinking in every organ of the 
 body which drives the sufferer to the use of 
 stimulants of one kind or another. Whether 
 wine, alcohol, ammonia, or the black drop, it is 
 still the want of a remedy, and not the pleasure 
 of the indulgence which sends the hypochon- 
 driac to that stimulant for relief. 
 
 In one of Burns' letters to Dr. Moore, he 
 mentions being confined by some lingering com- 
 plaints originating in the stomach, and his con- 
 stitutional melancholy being increased to such . 
 a degree, that for three months he was in a state 
 of mind scarcely to be envied by the hopeless 
 wretches who had received their final mittimus. 
 From the period of his first committing " the 
 sin of rhyme," which was a little previous to his 
 sixteenth year, to the age of three-and twenty, 
 the excitement of the tender passion, which he 
 appears to have felt not unfrequently in the fits
 
 278 BURNS. 
 
 of his hypochondria, seem to have had the 
 effect of soothing the dejection, which in later 
 life he employed otheK means to alleviate. 
 
 His biographer has noticed, as a curious fact, 
 that his melancholy was always banished in the 
 presence of women. " In his youth, we are 
 told by his brother Gilbert, he was constantly 
 the victim of some fair enslaver ; but these 
 connexions were governed by the strictest rules 
 of virtue and modesty, from which he never 
 deviated till his twenty-third year. He was 
 only anxious to be in a situation to marry : nor 
 do I recollect, he says, till towards the era of 
 his commencing author, when his growing cele- 
 brity occasioned his being often in company, 
 to have ever seen him intoxicated, nor was he 
 at all given to drinking. No sooner, however, 
 was he led into intemperance than his disorder 
 became aggravated, and his dejection, from
 
 BURNS. 279 
 
 being a casual occurrence, became conti- 
 nual. 
 
 " The gaiety," says Currie, " of many of 
 Burns'" writings, and the lively and even cheer- 
 ful colouring with which he has portrayed his 
 own character, may lead some persons to sup- 
 pose that the melancholy which hung over him 
 toward the end of his days was not an original 
 part of his constitution. It is not to be 
 doubted, indeed, that this melancholy acquired 
 a darker hue in the progress of his life ; but 
 independent of his own and his brother's tes- 
 timony, evidence is to be found among his 
 papers that he was subject very early to those 
 depressions of mind which are, perhaps, not 
 wholly separable from the sensibility of genius, 
 but which in him arose to an extraordinary 
 degree." 
 
 At the age of twenty-two he writes to his
 
 280 BURNS. 
 
 father, " that the weakness of his nerves has so 
 debilitated his mind, that he dare not review 
 past events, nor look forward into futurity, for 
 the least anxiety or perturbation in his head 
 produced most unhappy effects on his whole 
 frame." This was previous to his intemper- 
 ance. 
 
 In 1787 Uugald Stewart occasionally saw 
 him in Ayrshire; "and notwithstanding," says 
 the professor, "the various reports I heard 
 during the preceding winter of Burns 1 predi- 
 lection for convivial and not very select society, 
 I should have concluded in favour of his habits 
 of sobriety from all of him that ever fell under 
 my own observation : he told me indeed him- 
 self, that the weakness of his stomach was such 
 as to deprive him entirely of any merit in his 
 temperance. I was, however, somewhat alarmed 
 about the effects of his now sedentary and luxu-
 
 BURNS. 281 
 
 rious life, when he confessed to me, the first 
 night he spent in my house, after his winter's 
 campaign in town, that he had been disturbed, 
 when in bed, by a palpitation of the heart, 
 which he said was a complaint to which he had 
 of late become subject." 
 
 His winter campaign in town had been in- 
 jurious indeed to his habits, and he was so 
 conscious of the perils he was daily encounter- 
 ing, as to be desirous of fleeing from the scene 
 of temptation. 
 
 Having settled with his publisher, Burns 
 found himself master of nearly five hundred 
 pounds, two hundred of which he immediately 
 lent to his brother, who had taken upon himself 
 the support of their aged mother; with the 
 remainder of his money be purchased the farm 
 of Ellisland, on which he determined to settle 
 himself for life. His first act was to legalize
 
 282 BURNS. 
 
 his union with the object of his early attach- 
 ment, which unj,on then imperatively called for 
 a public declaration of marriage. 
 
 The natural fickleness of his disposition, 
 however, was soon manifested in his new 
 career ; and he had hardly entered upon the 
 peaceful enjoyment of country life before he 
 pined after the distinction of a maiden author's 
 brief reign in literary society. The state of his 
 feelings may be gathered at the time from his 
 common-place book. " This is now the third day 
 that I have been in this country. Lord ! what 
 is man ? What a bustling little bundle of pas- 
 sions, appetites, ideas and fancies ! and what a 
 capricious kind of existence he has here ! I am 
 such a coward in life so tired in the service, 
 that I would almost at any time, with Milton's 
 Adam, 
 
 " ' Gladly lay me in my mother's lap at ease.' "
 
 BURNS. 283 
 
 " His application to the cares and labours of 
 his farm, (says Currie,) was, interrupted by 
 several visits to his family in Ayrshire, and as 
 the distance was too great for a single day's 
 journey, he sometimes fell into company, and 
 forgot the resolutions he had formed, and in a 
 little time temptation assailed him nearer home. 
 It was not long before he began to view his 
 farm with dislike and despondence. 11 
 
 He now applied to his friends to procure him 
 some appointment, and by the interest of one of 
 them he procured the post of an exciseman, or 
 gauger, in the district in which he lived. It was 
 an unfortunate employment for a man like Burns, 
 and one which threw all the temptations in his 
 path, which a judicious friend might have 
 wished him removed from as far as possible. It 
 must have been a sorry exhibition to have seen 
 the poor poet, his mind probably communing
 
 284 BURNS. 
 
 with the skies, scampering over the country in 
 pursuit of some paltry defaulter of the revenue, 
 or travelling from ale-house to ale-house to 
 grant permits, and do the other drudgery of his 
 office : such business is rarely transacted with- 
 out refreshment, and sometimes the refreshment 
 of man and horse is the only business at- 
 tended to. 
 
 It would have been difficult to have devised 
 a worse occupation for the poor poet, or to have 
 found a man less fitted for its duties than Burns. 
 
 After occupying his farm for nearly three 
 years and a half, he found it necessary to resign 
 it, and depend on the miserable stipend of his 
 office about fifty pounds a year, and which 
 ultimately rose to seventy. 
 
 "Hitherto," says Currie, "though he was 
 addicted to excess in social parties, he had ab- 
 stained from the habitual use of strong liquors,
 
 BUB.XS. 285 
 
 and his constitution had not suffered any per- 
 manent injury from the irregularities of his 
 conduct. But in Dumfries, temptations to the 
 sin that so early beset him threw themselves in 
 his way, and his irregularities grew by degrees 
 into habits." In his own words, "he had 
 dwindled into a paltry exciseman, and slunk 
 out the rest of his insignificant existence in the 
 meanest of pursuits, and among the lowest of 
 mankind." 
 
 From this period poverty, and its attendant 
 ills, were seldom from his door ; the irritability 
 of his temper increased, and, as is generally the 
 case, the irregularity of his conduct. He be- 
 came more reckless and inveterate in his dis- 
 orders than ever : " He knew his own failings," 
 says Currie, "he predicted their consequence ; 
 the melancholy foreboding was never absent 
 from his mind, yet this passion carried him
 
 286 BURNS. 
 
 down the stream of error, and swept him over 
 the precipice he saw directly in his course." 
 
 " The fatal defect in his character," adds his 
 biographer, "lay in the comparative weakness 
 of his volition that superior faculty of the 
 mind which governs the conduct according to 
 the dictates of the understanding, and alone 
 entitles us to be denominated rational. 11 
 
 " The occupations of a poet," he continues, 
 " are not calculated to strengthen the governing 
 powers of the mind, or to weaken that sensi- 
 bility which requires perpetual control, since 
 it gives birth to the vehemence of passion, as 
 well as the higher powers of imagination. Un- 
 fortunately, the favourite occupations of genius 
 are calculated to increase all its peculiarities, to 
 nourish that lofty pride which disdains the little- 
 ness of prudence, and the restrictions of order, 
 and, by indulgence, to increase that sensibility
 
 BURNS. 287 
 
 which, in the present form of our existence, is 
 scarcely compatible with peace and happiness, 
 even when accompanied with the choicest gifts 
 of fortune !" 
 
 This is worth all that has ever been said on 
 the subject of " the poetic temperament," and 
 no apology, we trust, is needed for the length 
 of the quotation. 
 
 The rapid progress of his disorder, both 
 bodily and mental, is exhibited in the desponding 
 tenor of his letters, from the period of his re- 
 linquishing his agricultural pursuits. Indo- 
 lence, the baneful attendant of morbid sensi- 
 bility, aggravated his hypochondria. Idleness 
 became preferable to a distasteful occupation ; 
 and idleness, as usual, was followed by miseries 
 which rendered existence intolerable without 
 excitement. There is no habit gains so imper- 
 ceptibly on the hypochondriac as that of intern-
 
 288 BURNS. 
 
 perance. The melancholy man flies to stimu- 
 lating draughts for a momentary relief, but the 
 remedy must be increased in proportion to the 
 frequency of its repetition ; and in proportion as 
 the spirits are exalted by any stimulant the 
 stomach is debilitated : in course of time the 
 irritability of the latter organ, extending to the 
 brain, the senses become tremblingly alive (if 
 the expression may be used) to external im- 
 pressions ; in a word, the sensations are diseased, 
 and this result is morbid sensibility. Burns' 
 biographer has described the progress of this 
 disorder in language which needs not our feeble 
 praise to recommend it. " As the strength of 
 the body decays the volition fails ; in propor- 
 tion as the sensations are soothed and gratified 
 the sensibility increases ; and morbid sensibility 
 is the parent of indolence, because while it im- 
 pairs the regulating power of the mind, it ex-
 
 BURNS. 289 
 
 aggerates all the obstacles to exertion." And, 
 in the preceding observation, in speaking of mor- 
 bid sensibility, as being the temperament of 
 general talents, and not of poetry exclusively, 
 as some would have it, he deprecates the indul- 
 gence in indolence, which men of genius are ge- 
 nerally prone to, as the immediate occasion of the 
 infelicity of all their tribe. " The unbidden splen- 
 dorsofimagination^hesays," may indeed at times 
 irradiate the gloom which inactivity produces, 
 but such visions, though bright, are transient, 
 and serve to cast the realities of life into deeper 
 shade. 1 " Those who would trace the horrors of 
 hypochondria, that symptom, or synonyme of 
 indigestion, aggravated by indolence and in- 
 temperance, have only to peruse the letters of 
 Burns ; he will find in them the usual incon- 
 gruous mixture of mirth and melancholy which 
 VOL. i. o
 
 290 BURNS. 
 
 generally prevails in the conversation and cor- 
 respondence of dyspeptic men. 
 
 In one epistle he figures as the miserable 
 wretch, described by Cicero, " Ipse suum cor 
 edens hominum vestigia vitans." And perhaps 
 in the next 
 
 *' His bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne, 
 And all the day an unaccustomed spirit 
 Lifts him above the ground with cheerful thoughts." 
 
 Hypochondria is the malady in which extreme 
 passions meet. The most ludicrous lines Cow- 
 per ever wrote, to use his own words, were 
 written in the saddest mood ; and but for that 
 saddest mood, had never perhaps been written 
 at all. Such bursts of vivacity are by no means 
 incompatible with the deepest gloom. In one 
 of his letters, Burns thus speaks of his de- 
 jection : " I have been for some time pining
 
 BUKNS. 291 
 
 under secret wretchedness ; the pang of disap- 
 pointment, the sting of pride, and some wander- 
 ing stabs of remorse settle on my vitals like vul- 
 tures, when my attention is not called away by 
 the claims of society, or the vagaries of the muse. 
 Even in the hour of social mirth my gaiety is 
 the madness of an intoxicated criminal under 
 the hands of the executioner." In another let- 
 ter he speaks of " his constitution being blasted 
 db origine with a deep incurable taint of melan- 
 choly that poisoned his existence." 
 
 To Mr. Cunningham he writes, " Canst thou 
 not minister to a mind diseased ; canst thou 
 speak peace and rest to a soul tost on a sea of 
 troubles, without one friendly star to guide her 
 course, and dreading that the next surge may 
 overwhelm her? Canst thou give to a frame 
 tremblingly alive to the tortures of suspence, 
 the stability and hardihood of the rock that
 
 292 BURNS. 
 
 braves the blast? If thou canst not do the 
 least of these, why wouldest thou disturb me in 
 my miseries with thy inquiries after me ?" And 
 to the same correspondent, about a fortnight 
 before his death, he speaks of his sufferings in a 
 sadder strain. " Alas ! my friend, the voice of 
 the bard will soon be heard among you no 
 more ! You would not know me if you saw 
 me pale, emaciated, and so feeble as occasion- 
 ally to need help from my chair. My spirits 
 fled ! fled ! but I can no more on the subject." 
 He finishes by alluding to the probable reduc- 
 tion in his salary, in consequence of his illness, 
 to five-and-thirty pounds. He entreats his 
 friend to move the commissioners of excise to 
 grant the full salary. " If they do not," he 
 continues, " I must lay my account with an 
 exit truly en poete. If I die not of disease, I 
 must perish of hunger."
 
 BURNS. 293 
 
 It is needless to extract more. It has been 
 truly said, " there is not among all the martyr- 
 ologies that ever were penned so rueful a narra- 
 tive as the lives of the poets." Burns, we are 
 told by his biographer, " though by nature of 
 an athletic form, had in his constitution the pe- 
 culiarities and the delicacies that belong to the 
 temperament of genius. He was liable, from a 
 very early period of life, to that interruption in 
 the process of digestion which arises from 
 deep and anxious thought, and which is some- 
 times the effect, sometimes the cause, of depres- 
 sion of spirits. Connected with this disorder of 
 the stomach, there was a disposition to head- 
 ache affecting more especially the temples and 
 eye-balls, and frequently accompanied by vio- 
 lent and irregular movements of the heart. En- 
 dowed by nature with great sensibility of 
 nerves, Burns was in corporeal, as well as in
 
 294 BURNS. 
 
 his mental system, liable to inordinate impres- 
 sions to fever of body as well as of mind. This 
 
 predisposition to disease wrSc^ strict tempe- 
 
 *c 
 ranee and diet, regular exercise and s^hnd sleep, 
 
 might have subdued, habits of a very different 
 nature strengthened and inflamed." 
 
 In this brief observation is concentrated all 
 the knowledge that is to be gathered from books 
 on the subject of the literary malady, as indi- 
 gestion may be pre-eminently called. There is 
 not a word of it which demands not the most 
 serious attention from every individual who is 
 employed in literary pursuits ; he may gather 
 from it that excess in wine is not the only in- 
 temperance; but that excessive application to 
 studious habits is another kind of intemperance 
 no less injurious to the constitution than the 
 former.
 
 BUKXS. 295 
 
 Burns wrestled with his disorder in want and 
 wretchedness till October 1795; about which 
 time he was seized with his last illness a rheu- 
 matic fe^er. . The fever, it appears, was the 
 effect of cold caught in returning from a tavern 
 benumbed and intoxicated. His appetite from 
 the first attack failed him, his hands shook, and 
 his voice trembled on any exertion or emotion. 
 His pulse became weaker and more rapid, and 
 pain in the larger joints, and hands, and feet, 
 deprived him of the enjoyment of refreshing 
 sleep. Too much dejected in his spirits, and 
 too well aware of his real situation to entertain 
 hopes of recovery, he was ever musing on the 
 approaching desolation of his family, and his 
 spirits sunk into a uniform gloom. In June he 
 was recommended to go into the country ; " and 
 impatient of medical advice," says his biogra-
 
 296 BURNS. 
 
 pher, " as well as of every species of control, 
 he determined for himself to try the effects of 
 bathing in the sea." Burns, however, dis- 
 tinctly says in two of his letters, this ex- 
 traordinary remedy for rheumatism was pre- 
 scribed by his physician ; " The medical 
 men," he wrote to Mr. Cunningham, "tell 
 me that my last and only chance is bathing 
 and country quarters, and riding." 
 
 For the sake of the faculty, I trust that 
 Burns was mistaken in the matter, for no 
 medical man of common sense could think that 
 a patient sinking under rheumatism, and shat- 
 tered in constitution, was a fit subject for so 
 violent a remedy as the cold bath. No medical 
 man can consider, without shuddering, the mis- 
 chief it must have produced in the case of 
 Burns. At first he imagined that the bathing
 
 BURNS. 297 
 
 was of service ; the pains in his limbs were 
 relieved, but this was immediately followed by 
 a new attack of fever, as well might have been 
 expected, and when he returned to his own 
 house in Dumfries on the 18th of July he was 
 no longer able to stand upright. At this time 
 a tremor pervaded his frame ; his tongue was 
 parched, and his mind sunk into delirium, when 
 not roused by conversation. On the 2nd and 
 3rd day the fever increased, and his strength 
 diminished. On the 1 Oth the sufferings of this 
 great but ill-fated genius were terminated, and 
 a life was closed in which virtue and passion 
 had been at perpetual variance. 
 
 Thus perished Burns in his thirty-seventh 
 year. Let those who are without follies cast 
 the first stone at his infirmities, and thank 
 their God they are not like the other poor
 
 298 
 
 BURNS. 
 
 children of genius, frail in health, feeble in 
 resolution, in small matters improvident, and 
 unfortunate in most things. 
 
 END OF VOL. 1. 
 
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