I think with some interest upon the fact that Rabelais and Luther were born
in the same year.[1] Glorious spirits! glorious spirits!
----"Hos utinam inter
Heroas natum me!"
[Footnote 1:
They were both born within twelve months of each other, I believe; but
Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally
placed at the end of the year preceding.--ED.]
* * * * *
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,"
says Dryden, and true so far as this, that genius of the highest kind
implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power, which detached from
the discriminative and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw
into a royal diadem: but it would be at least as true, that great genius is
most alien from madness,--yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain,--
namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the accumulative memory,
which are no less essential constituents of "great wit."
_May _4. 1833.