MADNESS AND GENIUS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1051, 4 January 1883, Page 3

MADNESS AND GENIUS.

A century and a half ago Dryden remarked that ‘ Great wit to madness was allied while Shakespeare says that— The lunatic, lover and poet Are of imagma'ion all compact.

Collins, the author of ‘ Passions,’ was insane during the latter part of his life, though he did not survive the middle age. Cowper was a melancholy lunatic during the largest part of his life. The poetic artist Blake was also crazed, and wrote the prettiest poetry ever composed by a madman. Charles Lamb, at the age of twenty-one, was for six months in a lunatic asylum, and bis sister Mary, who had occasional spells of madness, killed her mother in one of those frenzies. Our own Percival was also partially deranged, at least his strange method of life can only be explained by this theory. It is also said that Shelley was insane on one point—his intense hatred of the character Jesus. Even Gerritt Smith, whose talents and benefaction have given him such distinction, was at one time an inmate of the asylum. A painful feature in the life of the poet Campbell was the lunacy of his oldest son, and the expense of maintaining him in an insane asylum for life kept (he poet poor. The only son of Howard, the philanthropist, was equally unfortunate, and died in an asylum.—Utica Herald.