Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1886-09-11

CoNsIpERINu tho great beneGts the race
has derived from u, sickness deserves 10
rank among tho worlds most bonelicent
agencies.
IL we count In tho agonles of Gethseinane
and tragedy OF Calvary we can safely say,
without fear Of contradiction, that humanity
owos more To suffering and weaknos than TO
all Other agencies put together all tho
wealth, wisdom and strength Of men from
the beginning would never have done AZ
much for their progress In civilization and
enlightenment In hoalth.preserYing aud
lite-saving appliances, in tho invention Of
comforts and conveniences, In the advance
ment and refinement OF most OF the sciences,
trades and professions, art and literature, as
their want and weakness and pain have done
They have been the piercing spur whose con-
stant pricking has ever kept urging forward
and upward tho powers of man.
l HAVE often wondered that somo Dsraeli
has not yet gone 10 work and shown how
much literature alone IN indebted to sickness
aud suffering. What a fruitful field for re-
search II would be ! Why, many Of tho pur-
est, most beauteous gems OF literature are
but tho crystallized drops OF blood forced
from their authors crushed and broken
hearts Some of the sweetest songs ever
sung on earth, tender and touching az angels
voices, are but tho sobs and sighs by suffer.
ing wrung from tho poets qnlyering soul
WE could go back to tho very first dawn
of Greek literature and find the worlds
greatest poem ascribed to the blind old
Homer, his own darkness tho source OF a
rainbow light arcbing with beauteous prom.
ise and hope tho void and formless origin
and tho brilliant and resplendent culmina-
ton OF ancient poetry. Long before we come
10 modern times the blind father OF poetry
was followed by goodly number in ancient
iitorature Greek and Roman, whose bodily
intirmities and ailments made them the aII
thors Of spiritual comfort, instruction and de-
| light 10 the world.
ALWAYS frall and OF delicate constitution,
Milton needed to feel the weight of that
heaviest cross, blindness rest upon him ere
he essayed his greatest work, " Paradise
| Lost" the great epic of our tongue" Who
| knows whether but for this afliiction We
| should ever have had this sublime poem at
| all. Certainly it would not have been alto
| gether the samo that 1t is. Nor would his
| samson Agoni9tes, less only in quantity than
| Paradise Lost, have been gwen u.s. For II
| was undoubtedly his unconscious affinity
| with the lonely, majestic figure OF the blind
| old Samson that led Milton To make him the
| theme OF his poem. And il was only his
kinship OF suffering that enabled him 10 put
| into The Hebrew hero such u wall "a this
| 90 worse than chains,
| Dungeon or beRgary, or deCropit age
| Light, the prime work OF God, to me Is extinct
| And all her various objects of delight
Annulled which might in part my grief have
Inferior TO the yllest row become
| nt man or worm the yilest here excel me;
| They creep, yet see !, dark, IN light exposed
| nnuhly irauoi contempt, hbus" and wrong,
| In power OF Others never in my own
| scarce hall seem to live, dead more than half.
| .. dark. dark. dark. amid the blaze OF noon
| lrreyocabiy dark, total eclipse,
o first created Beam. ana thou great word,
| Let there be light, ana light was over all
| why am thus OcIeaved thy prime decree '''
| BLINDNESS almost seems to be special v
prone to attack writer's perhaps they often
bring 1t on themselves by abusing their eyes,
overworking them. / need only mention
Dean Swift, who died deaf nearly blind and
a hopeless idiot Heinrich Heine, that mar.
velous German genius who dictated some Of
| his most brilliant poetry, most cutlingly sat
| irlcal verses, during the nine years in which
| he lay, blind and paral zed, and in incess an
| eNcruciating agony, on "A mattress in a garret
| in Paris kittn, the learned theolOgian and
| volnminous writer who did his work while
| deaf and dumb, a. well As blind Prescott,
| who we all know, composed his most charm
ing historical works while in total blindness;
| and so on up To the present, when contem-
| porary poetry is represented by the refined
| scholarly, sensitive Austin DobsOn, the deep
| and tender saupsss OF all OF whose exquisite
xeTss sanIs eve, ever renSnds one how constantly he
| "To be blind
| Turned out OF nature, mu lctHd "a "A man
Refused the daily largUsse OF the sun
To humble creatures
| or nearly every other alment under the
| sun, however, the brightest lights Of lltera.
| ture have bad their iull share And many
| OF these ailments were lar harder to bear
than mere blindness. Dryden was for years
asuherer from gout, erysipelas, and finally
died of an acute Inflammation yet through
| IL all hls prose and verse were as finished
| smooth and carefully written as though the
| products OF mind peaceful and serene
| swift from child suffered from spells of
giddiness and other physical Ills, which NAV
| have given their peculiar aCrid flavor to his
witty ana often biting works. Pore was not
| less conceited and despOtic man, nor less
conscientiousy careful writer aud verse
manufacturer, because OF his sickly constitu-
tion, hunch back and ugly dwarfed figure
richardson, our first novelist, was delicate
and semi-invalid most OF his life, and more
than probably We owe TO this his dev otion 10
letters, and production of works like Pamela
and Ciarissa lIarlowe, which opened a new
department in English literature. Everyone
knows that the sonorous growing and bear
ish tyranny of old Samuel Johnson, whereon
SO largely rests his tame, were but the symp-
toms of that scrofula that pervaded his whole
system.
How much OF the Bsconian philosophy we
owe TO the weak and delicate constitution,
the morbidly brooing and thoughtful, med
itative disposition OF Francis Bacon, who de-
clared, account my ordinary course of
study and meditation more painful than
most parts OF action are" this is probably
question as unapswerable as the inquiry,
how much OF the bitterness and gross mate.
riaism OF tho German Ludwig Fsuerbach's
philosophy must DO ascribed to his long in
Validism and the intense suffering from a
diseased spine, in the midst of which his
profound thinking and eloquent writing were
carried on,
WE deteC little OF the direct effects at least
OF his constitutional headaches, distressing
palpitation of the heart and frequent alarm
Ing spells of iantness, in the light and rollick-
ing, nor in the sweet and tender, poetry of
Robbie Burns ; yet he was almost life long
sufferer from them. Cowper is less success
iul in hiding his deep-seated melancholia
which made his lite one long martyrdom
De Quincy has himself told US to what mis-
cries he was subject, in his " Confessions of
an Opium Eater" And we feel without be-
ing told that no thoroughly sane and healthy
person could ever have written the " Ancient
Mariner"
"Alone, alone, all, all alone
Alone ON a wide, wide sea ~