The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking dream
distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished from the real
presence.--The senses are really affected in the ideal world, proved by a
variety of instances.--Of the rapture or sensation of deep study in art,
in science, and literature.--Of perturbed feelings in delirium.--In
extreme endurance of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts
in literature and art--of their self-immolations.
We left the man of genius in the stillness of meditation. We have now
to pursue his history through that more excited state which occurs in
the most active operations of genius, and which the term _reverie_
inadequately indicates. Metaphysical distinctions but ill describe it, and
popular language affords no terms for those faculties and feelings which
escape the observation of the multitude not affected by the phenomenon.
The illusion produced by a drama on persons of great sensibility, when all
the senses are awakened by a mixture of reality with imagination, is the
effect experienced by men of genius in their own vivified ideal world.
Real emotions are raised by fiction. In a scene, apparently passing in
their presence, where the whole train of circumstances succeeds in all the
continuity of nature, and where a sort of real existences appear to rise
up before them, they themselves become spectators or actors. Their
sympathies are excited, and the exterior organs of sense are visibly
affected--they even break out into speech, and often accompany their
speech with gestures.
In this equivocal state the enthusiast of genius produces his
masterpieces. This waking dream is distinct from reverie, where, our
thoughts wandering without connexion, the faint impressions are so
evanescent as to occur without even being recollected. A day of _reverie_
is beautifully painted by ROUSSEAU as distinct from a day of _thinking_:
"J'ai des journées délicieuses, errant sans souci, sans projet, sans
affaire, de bois en bois, et de rocher en rocher, _rêvant toujours et ne
pensant point."_ Far different, however, is one closely-pursued act of
meditation, carrying the enthusiast of genius beyond the precinct of
actual existence. The act of contemplation then creates the thing
contemplated. He is now the busy actor in a world which he himself only
views; alone, he hears, he sees, he touches, he laughs, he weeps; his
brows and lips, and his very limbs move.
Poets and even painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes witches, "are
imaginative," have often involuntarily betrayed, in the act of
composition, those gestures which accompany this enthusiasm. Witness
DOMENICHINO enraging himself that he might portray anger. Nor were these
creative gestures quite unknown to QUINTILIAN, who has nobly compared them
to the lashings of the lion's tail, rousing him to combat. Actors of
genius have accustomed themselves to walk on the stage for an hour before
the curtain was drawn, that they might fill their minds with all the
phantoms of the drama, and so suspend all communion with the external
world. The great actress of our age, during representation, always had the
door of her dressing-room open, that she might listen to, and if possible
watch the whole performance, with the same attention as was experienced by
the spectators. By this means she possessed herself of all the illusion of
the scene; and when she herself entered on the stage, her dreaming
thoughts then brightened into a vision, where the perceptions of the soul
were as firm and clear as if she were really the Constance or the
Katherine whom she only represented.[A]
[Footnote A: The late Mrs. SIDDONS. She herself communicated this striking
circumstance to me.]
Aware of this peculiar faculty, so prevalent in the more vivid exercise of
genius, Lord KAIMES seems to have been the first who, in a work on
criticism, attempted to name _the ideal presence_, to distinguish it from
the _real presence_ of things. It has been called the representative
faculty, the imaginative state, and many other states and faculties. Call
it what we will, no term opens to us the invisible mode of its operations,
no metaphysical definition expresses its variable nature. Conscious of the
existence of such a faculty, our critic perceived that the conception of
it is by no means clear when described in words.
Has not the difference between an actual thing, and its image in a glass,
perplexed some philosophers? and it is well known how far the ideal
philosophy has been carried by so fine a genius as Bishop BERKELEY. "All
are pictures, alike painted on the retina, or optical sensorium!"
exclaimed the enthusiast BARRY, who only saw pictures in nature, and
nature in pictures. This faculty has had a strange influence over the
passionate lovers of statues. We find unquestionable evidence of the
vividness of the representative faculty, or the ideal presence, vying with
that of reality. EVELYN has described one of this cast of mind, in the
librarian of the Vatican, who haunted one of the finest collections at
Rome. To these statues he would frequently talk as if they were living
persons, often kissing and embracing them. A similar circumstance might be
recorded of a man of distinguished talent and literature among ourselves.
Wondrous stories are told of the amatorial passion for marble statues; but
the wonder ceases, and the truth is established, when the irresistible
ideal presence is comprehended; the visions which now bless these lovers
of statues, in the modern land of sculpture, Italy, had acted with equal
force in ancient Greece. "The Last Judgment," the stupendous ideal
presence of MICHAEL ANGELO, seems to have communicated itself to some of
his beholders: "As I stood before this picture," a late traveller tells
us, "my blood chilled as if the reality were before me, and the very sound
of the trumpet seemed to pierce my ears."
Cold and barren tempers without imagination, whose impressions of objects
never rise beyond those of memory and reflection, which know only to
compare, and not to excite, will smile at this equivocal state of the
ideal presence; yet it is a real one to the enthusiast of genius, and it
is his happiest and peculiar condition. Destitute of this faculty, no
metaphysical aid, no art to be taught him, no mastery of talent will
avail him: unblest with it, the votary will find each sacrifice lying cold
on the altar, for no accepting flame from heaven shall kindle it.
This enthusiasm indeed can only be discovered by men of genius themselves;
yet when most under its influence, they can least perceive it, as the eye
which sees all things cannot view itself; or, rather, such an attempt
would be like searching for the principle of life, which were it found
would cease to be life. From an enchanted man we must not expect a
narrative of his enchantment; for if he could speak to us reasonably, and
like one of ourselves, in that case he would be a man in a state of
disenchantment, and then would perhaps yield us no better account than we
may trace by our own observations.
There is, however, something of reality in this state of the ideal
presence; for the most familiar instances will show how the nerves of each
external sense are put in motion by the idea of the object, as if the real
object had been presented to it. The difference is only in the degree. The
senses are more concerned in the ideal world than at first appears. The
idea of a thing will make us shudder; and the bare imagination of it will
often produce a real pain. A curious consequence may be deduced from this
principle; MILTON, lingering amid the freshness of nature in Eden, felt
all the delights of those elements which he was creating; his nerves moved
with the images which excited them. The fierce and wild DANTE, amidst the
abysses of his "Inferno," must often have been startled by its horrors,
and often left his bitter and gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on
the great criminal. The moveable nerves, then, of the man of genius are a
reality, he sees, he hears, he feels, by each. How mysterious to us is the
operation of this faculty!
A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,[A] like nature, open a volume large as life
itself--embracing a circuit of human existence! This state of the mind has
even a reality in it for the generality of persons. In a romance or a
drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator,
who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have
been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and
existing scene.
[Footnote A: Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what
they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often
and as long as he wills--with such a personal unity, that an ingenious
lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any
court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson.]
Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward
frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence? When FIELDING
said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been
writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling
to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the
observation by facts which never reached him. Metastasio, in writing the
ninth scene of the second act of his _Olympiad_, found himself suddenly
moved--shedding tears. The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears; and
they afterwards proved contagious. Had our poet not perpetuated his
surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circumstance had passed away with
the emotion, as many such have. Pope could never read Priam's speech for
the loss of his son without tears, and frequently has been observed to
weep over tender and melancholy passages. ALFIERI, the most energetic poet
of modern times, having composed, without a pause, the whole of an act,
noted in the margin--"Written under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and while
shedding a flood of tears." The impressions which the frame experiences in
this state, leave deeper traces behind them than those of reverie. A
circumstance accidentally preserved has informed us of the tremors of
DRYDEN after having written that ode,[A] which, as he confessed, he had
pursued without the power of quitting it; but these tremors were not
unusual with him--for in the preface to his "Tales," he tells us, that "in
translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil; but it was not
a pleasure without pain; the continual agitation of the spirits must needs
be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, and many pauses are
required for refreshment betwixt the heats."
[Footnote A: This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards
retouched; but Joseph Warton discovered in it the rapidity of the
thoughts, and the glow and the expressiveness of the images; which are the
certain marks of the _first sketch_ of a master.]
We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, susceptible of this
state, complaining of his sufferings during the poetical æstus. "When I
apply with attention, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent
tumult; I grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work." When
BUFFON was absorbed on a subject which presented great objections to his
opinions, he felt his head burn, and saw his countenance flushed; and this
was a warning for him to suspend his attention. GRAY could never compose
voluntarily: his genius resembled the armed apparition in Shakspeare's
master-tragedy. "He would not be commanded." When he wished to compose the
Installation Ode, for a considerable time he felt himself without the
power to begin it: a friend calling on him, GRAY flung open his door
hastily, and in a hurried voice and tone, exclaiming in the first verse of
that ode--
Hence, avaunt! 'tis holy ground!--
his friend started at the disordered appearance of the bard,
whose orgasm had disturbed his very air and countenance.
Listen to one labouring with all the magic of the spell. Madame ROLAND has
thus powerfully described the ideal presence in her first readings of
Telemachus and Tassot:--"My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire
colouring my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. I was
Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred. However, during this
perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything,
for any one: the whole had no connexion with myself. I sought for nothing
around me; I was they; I saw only the objects which existed for them; it
was a dream, without being awakened."
The description which so calm and exquisite an investigator of taste and
philosophy as our sweet and polished REYNOLDS has given of himself at one
of these moments, is too rare not to be recorded in his own words.
Alluding to the famous "Transfiguration," our own RAFFAELLE says--"When I
have stood looking at that picture from figure to figure, the eagerness,
the spirit, the close unaffected attention of each figure to the principal
action, my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot myself; and
for that time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman; for I could
really fancy the whole action was passing before my eyes."
The effect which the study of Plutarch's Illustrious Men produced on the
mighty mind of ALFIERI, during a whole winter, while he lived as it were
among the heroes of antiquity, he has himself described. Alfieri wept and
raved with grief and indignation that he was born under a government which
favoured no Roman heroes and sages. As often as he was struck with the
great deeds of these great men, in his extreme agitation he rose from his
seat as one possessed. The feeling of genius in Alfieri was suppressed for
more than twenty years, by the discouragement of his uncle: but as the
natural temperament cannot be crushed out of the soul of genius, he was a
poet without writing a single verse; and as a great poet, the ideal
presence at times became ungovernable, verging to madness. In traversing
the wilds of Arragon, his emotions would certainly have given birth to
poetry, could he have expressed himself in verse. It was a complete state
of the imaginative existence, or this ideal presence; for he proceeded
along the wilds of Arragon in a reverie, weeping and laughing by turns. He
considered this as a folly, because it ended in nothing but in laughter
and tears. He was not aware that he was then yielding to a demonstration,
could he have judged of himself, that he possessed those dispositions of
mind and that energy of passion which form the poetical character.
Genius creates by a single conception; the statuary conceives the statue
at once, which he afterwards executes by the slow process of art; and the
architect contrives a whole palace in an instant. In a single principle,
opening as it were on a sudden to genius, a great and new system of things
is discovered. It has happened, sometimes, that this single conception,
rushing over the whole concentrated spirit, has agitated the frame
convulsively. It comes like a whispered secret from Nature. When
MALEBRANCHE first took up Descartes's Treatise on Man, the germ of his own
subsequent philosophic system, such was his intense feeling, that a
violent palpitation of the heart, more than once, obliged him to lay down
the volume. When the first idea of the "Essay on the Arts and Sciences"
rushed on the mind of ROUSSEAU, a feverish symptom in his nervous system
approached to a slight delirium. Stopping under an oak, he wrote with a
pencil the Proso-popeia of Fabricius. "I still remember my solitary
transport at the discovery of a philosophical argument against the
doctrine of transubstantiation," exclaimed GIBBON in his Memoirs.
This quick sensibility of genius has suppressed the voice of poets in
reciting their most pathetic passages. THOMSON was so oppressed by a
passage in Virgil or Milton when he attempted to read, that "his voice
sunk in ill-articulated sounds from the bottom of his breast." The
tremulous figures of the ancient Sibyl appear to have been viewed in the
land of the Muses, by the energetic description which Paulus Jovius gives
us of the impetus and afflatus of one of the Italian improvvisatori, some
of whom, I have heard from one present at a similar exhibition, have not
degenerated in poetic inspiration, nor in its corporeal excitement. "His
eyes fixed downwards, kindle as he gives utterance to his effusions, the
moist drops flow down his cheeks, the veins of his forehead swell, and
wonderfully his learned ear, as it were, abstracted and intent, moderates
each impulse of his flowing numbers."[A]
[Footnote A: The passage is curious:--"Canenti defixi exardent oculi,
sudores manant, frontis venæ contumescunt, et quod mirum est, eruditæ
aures, tanquam alienæ et intentæ, omnem impetum profluentium numerorum
exactissimâ ratione moderantur."]
This enthusiasm throws the man of genius amid Nature into absorbing
reveries when the senses of other men are overcome at the appearance of
destruction; he continues to view only Nature herself. The mind of PLINY,
to add one more chapter to his mighty scroll, sought Nature amidst the
volcano in which he perished. VERNET was on board a ship in a raging
tempest where all hope was given up. The astonished captain beheld the
artist of genius, his pencil in his hand, in calm enthusiasm sketching the
terrible world of waters--studying the wave that was rising to devour
him.[A]
[Footnote A: Vernet was the artist whose sea-ports of France still
decorate the Louvre. He was marine painter to Louis XV. and grandfather of
the celebrated Horace Vernet, whose recent death has deprived France of
her best painter of battle-scenes.--ED.]
There is a tender enthusiasm in the elevated studies of antiquity. Then
the ideal presence or the imaginative existence prevails, by its perpetual
associations, or as the late Dr. Brown has, perhaps, more distinctly
termed them, _suggestions._ "In contemplating antiquity, the mind itself
becomes antique," was finely observed by Livy, long ere our philosophy of
the mind existed as a system. This rapture, or sensation of deep study,
has been described by one whose imagination had strayed into the occult
learning of antiquity, and in the hymns of Orpheus it seemed to him that
he had lifted the veil from Nature. His feelings were associated with her
loneliness. I translate his words:--"When I took these dark mystical hymns
into my hands, I appeared as it were to be descending into an abyss of the
mysteries of venerable antiquity; at that moment, the world in silence and
the stars and moon only, watching me." This enthusiasm is confirmed by Mr.
Mathias, who applies this description to his own emotions on his first
opening the manuscript volumes of the poet Gray on the philosophy of
Plato; "and many a learned man," he adds, "will acknowledge as his own the
feelings of this animated scholar."
Amidst the monuments of great and departed nations, our Imagination is
touched by the grandeur of local impressions, and the vivid associations,
or suggestions, of the manners, the arts, and the individuals, of a great
people. The classical author of Anacharsis, when in Italy, would often
stop as if overcome by his recollections. Amid camps, temples, circuses,
hippodromes, and public and private edifices, he, as it were, held an
interior converse with the manes of those who seemed hovering about the
capital of the old world; as if he had been a citizen of ancient Rome
travelling in the modern. So men of genius have roved amid the awful ruins
till the ideal presence has fondly built up the city anew, and have become
Romans in the Rome of two thousand years past. POMPONOIUS LETUS, who
devoted his life to this study, was constantly seen wandering amidst the
vestiges of this "throne of the world." There, in many a reverie, as his
eye rested on the mutilated arch and the broken column, abstracted and
immovable, he dropped tears in the ideal presence of Rome and of the
Romans.[A] Another enthusiast of this class was BOSIUS, who sought beneath
Rome for another Rome, in those catacombs built by the early Christians
for their asylum and their sepulchre. His work of "Roma Sotteranea" is the
production of a subterraneous life, passed in fervent and perilous
labours. Taking with him a hermit's meal for the week, this new Pliny
often descended into the bowels of the earth, by lamp-light, clearing away
the sand and ruins till a tomb broke forth, or an inscription became
legible. Accompanied by some friend whom his enthusiasm had inspired with
his own sympathy, here he dictated his notes, tracing the mouldering
sculpture, and catching the fading picture. Thrown back into the primitive
ages of Christianity, amid the local impressions, the historian of the
Christian catacombs collected the memorials of an age and of a race which
were hidden beneath the earth.[B]
[Footnote A: Shelley caught much of his poetry in wandering among the
ruins of the palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine Hill; and the
impression made by historic ruins on the mind of Byron is powerfully
evinced in his "Childe Harold."--ED.]
[Footnote B: A large number of these important memorials have been since
removed to the _Galleria Lapidaria_ of the Vatican, and arranged on the
walls by Marini. They are invaluable as mementoes of the early Church at
Rome. Aringhi has also devoted a work to their elucidation. The Rev. C.
Maitland's "Church in the Catacombs" is an able general summary, clearly
displaying their intrinsic historic value--ED.]
The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science with that creative
imagination which has startled even men of science by its peculiar
discoveries. WERNER, the mineralogist, celebrated for his lectures,
appears, by some accounts transmitted by his auditors, to have exercised
this faculty. Werner often said that "he always depended on the muse for
inspiration." His unwritten lecture was a reverie--till kindling in his
progress, blending science and imagination in the grandeur of his
conceptions, at times, as if he had gathered about him the very elements
of nature, his spirit seemed to be hovering over the waters and the
strata. With the same enthusiasm of science, CUVIER meditated on some
bones, and some fragments of bones, which could not belong to any known
class of the animal kingdom. The philosopher dwelt on these animal ruins
till he constructed numerous species which had disappeared from the globe.
This sublime naturalist has ascertained and classified the fossil remains
of animals whose existence can no longer be traced in the records of
mankind. His own language bears testimony to the imagination which carried
him on through a career so strange and wonderful. "It is a rational object
of ambition in the mind of man, to whom only a short space of time is
allotted upon earth, to have the glory of restoring the history of
_thousands of ages which preceded the existence of his race, and of
thousands of animals that never were contemporaneous with his species_."
Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of
genius. Even in the practical part of a science, painful to the operator
himself, Mr. Abernethy has declared, and eloquently declared, that this
enthusiasm is absolutely requisite. "We have need of enthusiasm, or some
strong incentive, to induce us to spend our nights in study, and our days
in the disgusting and health-destroying observation of human diseases,
which alone can enable us to understand, alleviate, or remove them. On no
other terms can we be considered as real students of our profession--to
confer that which sick kings would fondly purchase with their diadem--that
which wealth cannot purchase, nor state nor rank bestow--to alleviate the
most insupportable of human afflictions." Such is the enthusiasm of the
physiologist of genius, who elevates the demonstrations of anatomical
inquiries by the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, connecting
"man with the common Master of the universe."
This enthusiasm inconceivably fills the mind of genius in all great and
solemn operations. It is an agitation amidst calmness, and is required hot
only in the fine arts, but wherever a great and continued exertion of the
soul must be employed. The great ancients, who, if they were not always
philosophers, were always men of genius, saw, or imagined they saw, a
divinity within the man. This enthusiasm is alike experienced in the
silence of study and amidst the roar of cannon, in painting a picture or
in scaling a rampart. View DE THOU, the historian, after his morning
prayers, imploring the Divinity to purify his heart from partiality and
hatred, and to open his spirit in developing the truth, amidst the
contending factions of his times; and HAYDN, employed in his "Creation,"
earnestly addressing the Creator ere he struck his instrument. In moments
like these, man becomes a perfect unity--one thought and one act,
abstracted from all other thoughts and all other acts. This intensity of
the mind was felt by GRAY in his loftiest excursions, and is perhaps the
same power which impels the villager, when, to overcome his rivals in a
contest for leaping, he retires hack some steps, collects all exertion
into his mind, and clears the eventful bound. One of our admirals in the
reign of Elizabeth held as a maxim, that a height of passion, amounting to
frenzy, was necessary to qualify a man for the command of a fleet; and
NELSON, decorated by all his honours about him, on the day of battle, at
the sight of those emblems of glory emulated himself. This enthusiasm was
necessary for his genius, and made it effective.
But this enthusiasm, prolonged as it often has been by the operation of
the imaginative existence, becomes a state of perturbed feeling, and can
only be distinguished from a disordered intellect by the power of volition
possessed by a sound mind of withdrawing from the ideal world into the
world of sense. It is but a step which may carry us from the wanderings of
fancy into the aberrations of delirium. The endurance of attention, even
in minds of the highest order, is limited by a law of nature; and when
thinking is goaded on to exhaustion, confusion of ideas ensues, as
straining any one of our limbs by excessive exertion produces tremor and
torpor.
With curious art the brain too finely wrought
Preys on herself and is destroyed by Thought;
Constant attention wears the active mind,
Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind--
The greatest genius to this fate may bow.
Even minds less susceptible than high genius may become overpowered by
their imagination. Often, in the deep silence around us, we seek to
relieve ourselves by some voluntary noise or action which may direct our
attention to an exterior object, and bring us back to the world, which we
had, as it were, left behind us. The circumstance is sufficiently
familiar; as well as another; that whenever we are absorbed in profound
contemplation, a startling noise scatters the spirits, and painfully
agitates the whole frame. The nerves are then in a state of the utmost
relaxation. There may be an agony in thought which only deep thinkers
experience. The terrible effect of metaphysical studies on BEATTIE has
been told by himself. "Since the 'Essay on Truth' was printed in quarto, I
have never _dared_ to read it over. I durst not even read the sheets to
see whether there were any errors in the print, and was obliged to get a
friend to do that office for me. These studies came in time to have
dreadful effects upon my nervous system; and I cannot read what I then
wrote without some degree of horror, because it recalls to my mind the
horrors that I have sometimes felt after passing a long evening in those
severe studies."
GOLDONI, after a rash exertion of writing sixteen plays in a year,
confesses he paid the penalty of the folly. He flew to Genoa, leading a
life of delicious vacuity. To pass the day without doing anything, was all
the enjoyment he was now capable of feeling. But long after he said, "I
felt at that time, and have ever since continued to feel, the consequence
of that exhaustion of spirits I sustained in composing my sixteen
comedies."
The enthusiasm of study was experienced by POPE in his self-education, and
once it clouded over his fine intellect. It was the severity of his
application which distorted his body; and he then partook of a calamity
incidental to the family of genius, for he sunk into that state of
exhaustion which SMOLLETT experienced during half a year, called a _coma
vigil,_ an affection of the brain, where the principle of life is so
reduced, that all external objects appear to be passing in a dream.
BOERHAAVE has related of himself, that having imprudently indulged in
intense thought on a particular subject, he did not close his eyes for six
weeks after; and TISSOT, in his work on the health of men of letters,
abounds in similar cases, where a complete stupor has affected the unhappy
student for a period of six months.
Assuredly the finest geniuses have not always the power to withdraw
themselves from that intensely interesting train of ideas, which we have
shown has not been removed from about them by even the violent stimuli of
exterior objects; and the scenical illusion which then occurs, has been
called the _hallucinatio studiosa,_ or false ideas in reverie. Such was
the state in which PETRARCH found himself, in that minute narrative
of a vision in which Laura appeared to him; and TASSO, in the lofty
conversations he held with a spirit that glided towards him on the beams
of the sun. In this state was MALEBRANCHE listening to the voice of God
within him; and Lord HERBEBT, when, to know whether he should publish his
book, he threw himself on his knees, and interrogated the Deity in the
stillness of the sky.[A] And thus PASCAL started at times at a fiery gulf
opening by his side. SPINELLO having painted the fall of the rebellious
angels, had so strongly imagined the illusion, and more particularly the
terrible features of Lucifer, that he was himself struck with such horror
as to have been long afflicted with the presence of the demon to which his
genius had given birth. The influence of the game ideal presence operated
on the religious painter ANGELONI, who could never represent the
sufferings of Jesus without his eyes overflowing with tears. DESCARTES,
when young, and in a country seclusion, his brain exhausted with
meditation, and his imagination heated to excess, heard a voice in the air
which called him to pursue the search of truth; nor did he doubt the
vision, and this delirious dreaming of genius charmed him even in his
after-studies. Our COLLINS and COWPER were often thrown into that
extraordinary state of mind, when the ideal presence converts us into
visionaries; and their illusions were as strong as SEEDENBORG'S, who saw a
terrestrial heaven in the glittering streets of his New Jerusalem; or
JACOB BEHMEN'S, who listened to a celestial voice till he beheld the
apparition of an angel; or CARDAN'S, when he so carefully observed a
number of little armed men at his feet; or BENVENUTO CELLINI'S, whose
vivid imagination and glorious egotism so frequently contemplated "a
resplendent light hovering over his shadow."
[Footnote A: In his curious autobiography he has given the prayer he used,
ending "I am not satisfied whether I shall publish this book _de
veritate_; if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from
heaven; if not I shall suppress it." His lordships adds, "I had no sooner
spoken these words but a loud, though gentle noise came from the heavens
(for it was like nothing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that
I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded,
whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever it
may seem) I protest before the eternal God is true, neither am I any way
superstitiously deceived therein, since I did not only clearly hear the
noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud,
did to my thinking see the place from whence it came."--ED.]
Such minds identified themselves with their visions! If we pass them over
by asserting that they were insane, we are only cutting the knot which we
cannot untie. We have no right to deny what some maintain, that a sympathy
of the corporeal with the incorporeal nature of man, his imaginative with
his physical existence, is an excitement which appears to have been
experienced by persons of a peculiar organization, and which
metaphysicians in despair must resign to the speculations of enthusiasts
themselves, though metaphysicians reason about phenomena far removed from
the perceptions of the eye. The historian of the mind cannot omit this
fact, unquestionable, however incomprehensible. According to our own
conceptions, this state must produce a strange mysterious personage: a
concentration of a human being within himself, endowed with inward eyes,
ears which listen to interior sounds, and invisible hands touching
impalpable objects, for whatever they act or however they are acted on, as
far as respects themselves all must have passed within their own minds.
The Platonic Dr. MORE flattered himself that he was an enthusiast without
enthusiasm, which seems but a suspicious state of convalescence. "I must
ingenuously confess," he says, "that I have a natural touch of enthusiasm,
in my complexion, but such as I thank God was ever governable enough, and
have found at length perfectly subduable. In virtue of which victory I
know better what is in enthusiasts than they themselves; and therefore was
able to write with life and judgment, and shall, I hope, contribute not a
little to the peace and quiet of this kingdom thereby." Thus far one of
its votaries: and all that he vaunts to have acquired by this mysterious
faculty of enthusiasm is the having rendered it "at length perfectly
subduable." Yet those who have written on "Mystical devotion," have
declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have
aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories
of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove
how their delusions consisted of the ocular _spectra_ of their brain and
the accelerated sensations of their nerves. BAYLE has conjured up an
amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to
occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms
agitating his brain might so disorder his mind as to expose him to
spectral visions; and so being very timid, and distrusting his own
imagination, he was averse at times to be left alone. Apparitions often
happen in dreams, but they may happen to a man when awake, for reading and
hearing of them would revive their images, and these images might play
even an incredulous philosopher some unlucky trick.
[Footnote A: CHARLES BUTLER has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical
Devotion." He was a Roman Catholic. NORRIS, and Dr. HENRY MORE, and Bishop
BERKELEY, may be consulted by the curious.]
But men of genius whose enthusiasm has not been past recovery, have
experienced this extraordinary state of the mind, in those exhaustions of
study to which they unquestionably are subject. Tissot, on "The Health of
Men of Letters," has produced a terrifying number of cases. They
see and hear what none but themselves do. Genius thrown into this
peculiar state has produced some noble effusions. KOTZEBUE was once
absorbed in hypochondriacal melancholy, and appears to have meditated on
self-destruction; but it happened that he preserved his habit of dramatic
composition, and produced one of his most energetic dramas--that of
"Misanthropy and Repentance." He tells us that he had never experienced
such a rapid flow of thoughts and images, and he believed, what a
physiological history would perhaps show, that there are some maladies,
those of the brain and the nerves, which actually stretch the powers of
the mind beyond their usual reach. It is the more vivid world of ideal
existence.
But what is more evident, men of the finest genius have experienced these
hallucinations in society acting on their moral habits. They have
insulated the mind. With them ideas have become realities, and suspicions
certainties; while events have been noted down as seen and heard, which in
truth had never occurred. ROUSSEAU'S phantoms scarcely ever quitted him
for a day. BARRY imagined that he was invisibly persecuted by the Royal
Academy, who had even spirited up a gang of housebreakers. The vivid
memoirs of ALFIERI will authenticate what DONNE, who himself had suffered
from them, calls "these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of the
senses." Too often the man of genius, with a vast and solitary power,
darkens the scene of life; he builds a pyramid between himself and the
sun. Mocking at the expedients by which society has contrived to protect
its feebleness, he would break down the institutions from which he has
shrunk away in the loneliness of his feelings. Such is the insulating
intellect in which some of the most elevated spirits have been reduced. To
imbue ourselves with the genius of their works, even to think of them, is
an awful thing! In nature their existence is a solecism, as their genius
is a paradox; for their crimes seem to be without guilt, their curses have
kindness in them, and if they afflict mankind it is in sorrow.
Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchase-price of high passion and
invention? Perhaps never has there been a man of genius of this rare cast,
who has not betrayed the ebullitions of imagination in some outward
action, at that period when the illusions of life are more real to genius
than its realities. There is a _fata morgana_, that throws into the air a
pictured land, and the deceived eye trusts till the visionary shadows
glide away. "I have dreamt of a golden land," exclaimed FUSELI, "and
solicit in vain for the barge which is to carry me to its shore." A slight
derangement of our accustomed habits, a little perturbation of the
faculties, and a romantic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent
promise of genius; of that generous temper which knowing nothing of the
baseness of mankind, with indefinite views carries on some glorious design
to charm the world or to make it happier. Often we hear, from the
confessions of men of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most
elevating and the most chimerical projects; and if age ridicule thy
imaginative existence, be assured that it is the decline of its genius.
That virtuous and tender enthusiast, FÉNÉLON, in his early youth, troubled
his friends with a classical and religious reverie. He was on the point of
quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with the piety of a
missionary, and with the taste of a classical antiquary. The Peloponnesus
opened to him the Church of Corinth where St. Paul preached, the Piræus
where Socrates conversed; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from
Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe. Such was the influence of
the ideal presence; and barren will be his imagination, and luckless his
fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has never been touched by
such a temporary delirium.
To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the
self-immolation of men of genius. Mighty and laborious works have been
pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain destruction of the fortune of
the individual. Vast labours attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their
progress. Such men have sealed their works with their blood: they have
silently borne the pangs of disease; they have barred themselves from the
pursuits of fortune; they have torn themselves away from all they loved in
life, patiently suffering these self-denials, to escape from interruptions
and impediments to their studies. Martyrs of literature and art, they
behold in their solitude the halo of immortality over their studious
heads--that fame which is "a life beyond life." VAN HELMONT, in his
library and his laboratory, preferred their busy solitude to the honours
and the invitations of Rodolphus II., there writing down what he daily
experienced during thirty years; nor would the enthusiast yield up to the
emperor one of those golden and visionary days! MILTON would not desist
from proceeding with one of his works, although warned by the physician of
the certain loss of his sight. He declared he preferred his duty to his
eyes, and doubtless his fame to his comfort. ANTHONY WOOD, to preserve the
lives of others, voluntarily resigned his own to cloistered studies; nor
did the literary passion desert him in his last moments, when with his
dying hands the hermit of literature still grasped his beloved papers, and
his last mortal thoughts dwelt on his "Athenæ Oxonienses." MORERI, the
founder of our great biographical collections, conceived the design with
such enthusiasm, and found such seduction in the labour, that he willingly
withdrew from the popular celebrity he had acquired as a preacher, and the
preferment which a minister of state, in whose house he resided, would
have opened to his views.[A] After the first edition of his "Historical
Dictionary," he had nothing so much at heart as its improvement. His
unyielding application was converting labour into death; but collecting
his last renovated vigour, with his dying hands he gave the volume to the
world, though he did not live to witness even its publication. All objects
in life appeared mean to him, compared with that exalted delight of
addressing, to the literary men of his age, the history of their brothers.
Such are the men, as BACON says of himself, who are "the servants of
posterity,"--
Who scorn delights, and live laborious days!
[Footnote A: Louis Moreri was born in Provence in 1643, and died in 1680,
at the early age of 37, while engaged on a second edition of his great
work. The minister alluded to in the text was M. de Pomponne, Secretary of
State to Louis XIV. until the year 1679.--ED.]
The same enthusiasm inspires the pupils of art consumed by their own
ardour. The young and classical sculptor who raised the statue of Charles
II., placed in the centre of the Royal Exchange, was, in the midst of his
work, advised by his medical friends to desist; for the energy of his
labour, with the strong excitement of his feelings, already had made fatal
inroads in his constitution: but he was willing, he said, to die at the
foot of his statue. The statue was raised, and the young sculptor, with
the shining eye and hectic flush of consumption, beheld it there--returned
home--and died. DROUAIS, a pupil of David, the French painter, was a youth
of fortune, but the solitary pleasure of his youth was his devotion to
Raphael; he was at his studies from four in the morning till night.
"Painting or nothing!" was the cry of this enthusiast of elegance; "First
fame, then amusement," was another. His sensibility was great as his
enthusiasm; and he cut in pieces the picture for which David declared he
would inevitably obtain the prize. "I have had my reward in your
approbation; but next year I shall feel more certain of deserving it," was
the reply of this young enthusiast. Afterwards he astonished Paris with
his "Marius;" but while engaged on a subject which he could never quit,
the principle of life itself was drying up in his veins. HENRY HEADLEY and
KIRKE WHITE were the early victims of the enthusiasm of study, and are
mourned by the few who are organized like themselves.
'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low;
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart;
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel,
While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest,
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast,
One of our former great students, when reduced in health by excessive
study, was entreated to abandon it, and in the scholastic language of the
day, not to _perdere substantiam propter accidentia_. With a smile the
martyr of study repeated a verse from Juvenal:
Nec propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
No! not for life lose that for which I live!
Thus the shadow of death falls among those who are existing with more than
life about them. Yet "there is no celebrity for the artist," said GESNER,
"if the love of his own art do not become a vehement passion; if the hours
he employs to cultivate it be not for him the most delicious ones of his
life; if study become not his true existence and his first happiness; if
the society of his brothers in art be not that which most pleases him; if
even in the night-time the ideas of his art do not occupy his vigils or
his dreams; if in the morning he fly not to his work, impatient to
recommence what he left unfinished. These are the marks of him who labours
for true glory and posterity; but if he seek only to please the taste of
his age, his works will not kindle the desires nor touch the hearts of
those who love the arts and the artists."
Unaccompanied by enthusiasm, genius will produce nothing but uninteresting
works of art; not a work of art resembling the dove of Archytas, which
beautiful piece of mechanism, while other artists beheld flying, no one
could frame such another dove to meet it in the air. Enthusiasm is that
secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius,
throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very
ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work
always leaves us in a state of musing.