The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1900-12-27
WISE ONES CROSSES.
THE GREAT OF EARTH HAD TO
BEAR THEM. "
Some Mental or Physical Infirmity Which
Wrung Agony from Beneath the Crown
of Distinguished Persons - Physical
Defects of Superior Men.

In looking over the long roll of the
worlds great men it seems as If the
majority had some mental or physical
infirmity which wrung their brows in
agony beneath their crown OF bays.
Homer is said to have been blind,
though it is probable that his blind
ness was an affection of his later years,
else how could he have written of the
"wine-dark sea" and the 'rosy-fin-
gered dawn" Demosthenes, as every
schoolboy knows, suffered and over
came his defect by making speeches
with pebbles in his mouth to the
waves breaking on the Grecian shores.
Milton was a martyr to govt, and it
was his equity constitution, combined
with his Unsuitable thirst for work,
that finally brought on his blindness.
Before he was forty he had lost the
sight of one eye by the deposit of
equity crystals around the optic nerve.
Though warned that arduous work
meant total blindness he undertook to
write a reply to Claude de Saumaise's
book on THE Divine Right of Kings"
and as he wrote impenetrable darkness
slowly closed over him. 1t was not I'M
til after he was wholly blind that he
gave to the world Paradise Lost
Pope was a hunchback with a wasp
ish temper, and was made constantly
miserable by a realizing sense Of his
malformations. His deformity once
was made the occasion of a brutal jest
by a soldier whose sensibilities Pope's
venomous tongue had pierced to the
quick. One evening at a tavern which
he frequented the poet was discussing
with some friends what was likely to
be the proper punctuation of a passage
in the Iliad which he was then trans
lating. There was much diversity Of
opinion, and a soldier in the room sug-
gested that perhaps an Interrogation
mark had been omitted. Pope angrily
asked what he knew about %interroga-
ton marks. "a mark of interroga-
tion," calmly replied the soldier, lis a
crooked little thing that asks impu-
dent questions"
DR.. Johnson. the dictionary man,
suffered greatly from ~scrofula, then
called kings evil"-a disease Of which
it was believed the "kynges of Eng
land, by the power which God hath
gwen to them, doth make the sickle
man whole" Accordingly Johnson
was touched by Queen Ann, but was
not cured. the Salic law evidently in
terfering with the operation of the
hearing power. In addition to being
eaten with scrofula. DR.. Johnson was
afflicted with hypochondria, which all
most amounted to insanity. He lived
in constant dread of going crazy, and
even on his deathbed translated his
prayers into Latin to prove to himself
that he had not lost his mental facul-
ties.
The poet Cowper did all his best
work in the intervals between fits of
the deepest religious m~elancholia. Mary
Lamb went insane. Byron, otherwise
as beautiful as a Greek god, had a club
foot. Who that once has read can
forget Maeauley's ~antithetical desrip-
ton of Byron? "He had a head that
sculptors loved to copy, and a foot
the deformity of which the beggers in
the street mimicked.' Sir Walter Scott
was lame. One leg was slightly short
er than the other and one of his feet
was distorted. Carlyle was a chronic
~dyspeptic, and Charles Kingsley slut
tered. Robert Louis Stevenson did his
best work after the Edinburgh doctors
had told him he had only half a lung
left Mahomet, Julius Caesar and
Napoleon were epileptics. Nelson had
two acquired deformities. He lost one
eye and his left arm in battle. When
his arm was amputated one of the
nerves unwittingly was bound up in
the ligature applied to one of the ar
teries, and as a result the gallant adj
miral suffered much pain for several
years. The German emperor has an
imperfect development Of his left arm,
and President Kruger is said to be a
sufferer from Bright's disease. Louis
Pasteur was afflicted with partial par
alysis.
DAAAa~kn IN E0HAHn