The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1897-06-11
GENIUS AND MADNESS
THE SUBJECT REVIVED BY RECOL-
LECTlONS OF TENNYSON.
The Directly Opposite Views OF the Cues
tion Taken by Charles Lamb and DIR.
forbes winslow-A Few of the Most
Noted Instances of Eccentricity.

forbes winslow-A Few of the Most
Noted Instances of Eccentricity.
Professor Max Mullor's "reminiscences Of
the poet Tennyson which are printed in
The Cosmopolis, tend 10 confirm the old
and widely accepted theory that great gen.
ius is apt TO be allied with great eccen-
tricity. There seems TO have been In tho
late poet laureate "a faint OF the bad tenn
per and intense egoism which character
lied his famous contemporary, Thomas
Carlyle, and made him say and do so many
ungraceful things. DR.. Muller quotes
Tennyson, for example, as finding fault
with the meals spread for him by his host
IA breach of good manners for which
schoolboy would be properly punished. At
dinner he manifested annoyance because
the sauce served with salmon was not the
kind ne liked. At breakfast he whipped
off the cover of the hot dish set before him
and exclaimed testify: Mutton chops
The staple of every bad inn in England"
Like Carlyle, the laureate was at his mel
lowest and best while under the influence
of his Indispensable pipe. DR.. Muller re-
| lates that on one occasion, heing tainted
by some friends with his inability to break
the smoking habit, Tennyson announced
his intention to give it up at once and for
ever. The same evening he threw his pipes
and tobacco out of his bedroom window.
After two days abstention he was very
moody and captious, and the third day he
was intolerably So After passing a rest
less night he got up, went quietly to the
garden picked up one of his broken pipes,
filled it with tobacco and after short
pull came to breakfast with normal seren-
ity. He never again referred to the ques-
ton of breaking the tobacco habit.
1t is astonishing how few great authors
have been free from marked idiosyncrasies,
lending color to the popular theory that
between the most exalted intellects and
insanity there Is only very narrow d.
viding line. Dryden has put the belief
into famous couplet. Long before that
was written Aristotle wrote, "No excellent
soul is exempt from mixture of mad
ness" Seneca said the same thing in
other words and Pope echoes Dryden In
his Essay on Mani"
Remembrance and reflection how allied;
What thin partitions sense from thought di
v:dei
DIR. Forbes Winslow, the famous English
authority on alienism, not long since gave
1t as his deliberate opinion that there Is
a scientific foundation for the theory that
genius and madness are first cousins.
He says that persons of genius are usually
persons of great sensibility and that nerv-
Gus irritability and emotional disturb
ance go along with the ultra sensitive
temperament. He points to Scott and
Byron as examples of men of great genius
who were both endowed with that excess
i've sensibility which tends to become
morbid, melancholy and deranged. 1t is
curious that DR.. Winslow should take two
poets as his illustrations, for, while all
true poets must be men of genius, all men
of genius are certainly not poets There
has been q general concurrence of opinion
to the effect that poetry Is the product of
mental conditions that are extraordinary
If not abnormal. Shelley, himself not
free from the suspicion of mental disorder,
declares that "poets are the hierophants OF
an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors
|, of the gigantic shadows which futurity
casts upon the present, and this defni
ton itself suggests some incoherency OF
Thought. .Junus, in one of his famous
letters to Sir William Draper speaks OF
'the melancholy madness of poetry" and
| If we are to confinc our inspection of gen
fuses to poets and authors alone there
certainly is much evidence pointing to
the alleged affinity of genius and insanity.
Coleridge could not have been entirely
sane or he would not have taken such de-
light in satirizing himself. The poet
Alfieri wore his hair so long that, as he
sat in his box at the theater in Turin, II
streamed over the other side of the parti-
ton. where a lady broke out in voluble
admiration of it, The next day Alfieri
cut his tresses close to his head and sent
them in parcel to the lady. 1t was a
poets way of reproving rudeness. No bust
( ness man would have so acted. Byron
did many strange things. His conversion
of a skull found in the graveyard of his
ancestors into drink cup was one of the
least crazy. These instances of poetic
freakiness could be easily extended.
Young's "Night Thoughts" though
, Young was as cheerful as cricket when
he wrote it, is as full of the microbes
of melancholia, and Beattie was justified
in saying that whenever one finds himself
|, reading it in "a corner with pleasure II
} is time to shut the hook and return to the
company"
Yet Charles Lamb observes in one OF
his brilliant essays that cit is impossible
for the mind to conceive of Il mad Shakes
peare" and he takes issue squarely with
DIR. Forbes Winslow's theory by declaring
that the near relationship of genius to in
sanity is popular fallacy, and that 1.-THE
greatest wits will ever be found to be the
sanest writer's" "The ground of the fal
lacy" says Lamb, THAT men, finding the
raptures of the higher poetry condition OF
exaltation TO which they have no parallel
i'm their own experience besides the spur
, Gus resemblance of it in dreams and fevers
imputc u state of dreamincss and fever tc
the poet He is not possessed by his sub
ject, but has domination over It, In the
groves of Eden he walks familiar rs in his
. native paths He ascends the empyrear
heaven ard ia not intoxicated He tread'
the burning mari without dismay He
wings his fight without self loss through
realms of chaos and old night.
Between Ills Judgment of Lamb, who
was himself bundle OF eccentricitics. and
DIR. Niuslow's scientific opinion there !:
plenty OF room fer doubt and discussion
But as 10 the broader proposition that al
, forms OF genius arc akin to madness We
: do not htlc\c il can lie sustained. The
weight Of evidence ana ri probability Il