He of whom Shakespeare himself has written

-"whose deep conceit is such,

As passing all conceit, needs no defence"

Spenser, personified imagination as one who "could things to come foresee;" and he describes this personification in terms perfectly consistent with the notions which the great dramatist assigns to fancy, in the genesis of lunacy, poesy, and love. We read in the Faerie Queene how Sir Guyon, for his instruction, was shown Imagination in the House of Temperance. The Elfin Knight beheld the embodied power inhabiting a chamber within which were depicted in sundry colours the many exaggerated feats of an erratic fancy

"Infernall hags, centaurs, fiendes, hippodames,

Apes, lyons, eagles, owls, fooles, lovers, children, dames.
And all the chamber filled was with flyes,
Which buzzed all about, and made such sound,
That they encombred all men's eares and eyes,
Like many swarmes of bees assembled round,
After their hives with honey do abound.
All those were idle thoughtes and fantasies,
Devices, dreams, opinions unsound,

Themes, visions, sooth-sayes, and prophesies,
And all that fained is-as leasings, tales and lies.
Emongst them all sate which wonned there,
That hight Phantastes by his nature true;
A man of yeares, yet fresh, as mote appeare,
Of swarth complexion, and of crabbed hew,
That him full of melancholy did shew;
Bent, hollow, beetle brows, sharpe staring eyes,
That mad or foolish seemed; one by his vise
Mote deeme him borne with ill-disposed skyes,

When oblique Saturne sat in the house of agonyes.'

Ebenezer Sibley hath written in his ponderous quartot on the Occult Sciences, that "All melancholy and nervous affections, quartan agues, falling sickness, black-jaundice, tooth-ache," &c., are under the government of Saturn.

The introduction by Shakespeare of the lover into the category of kinship between genius and insanity is true to the spirit of the idea, and has its warranty even in the letter. Thus we learn from Chaucer's exquisite description of the love-stricken Arcite that

"In his gaze, for all the world he ferd
Nought only like the lovers maladie
Of Ereos, but rather ylike manie,‡
Engendred of humourous melancolike,

*Bk. ii. canto ix, st. 1., li., lii.

+ 1790, p. 108.

+ Madness.

Beforne his hed in his calle fantastike.
And shortly turned was all up so down,
Both habit and eke dispositiones

Of him, this woful lover, Dan Arcite.' Plato speaks of love as a divine madness, and he represents Socrates as combating, in the recantation of that philosopher concerning love,† the falsity of the assertion, "which declares that when a lover is present, favour ought to be shown to one who is not in love, because the one is mad, and the other in his sober senses."

The supernatural character which was originally believed to appertain to genius is retained in the name, and the heavenborn gift, whether proceeding from the genius of prophecy, of poetry, of science, or of love-whether from Apollo, or the Muses, or Cupid-was thought to be inextricably linked with madness. Hence from the notion that genius was the manifestation of a divine afflatus came first the startling paradox that madness was not an evil, but a blessing.

Plato in the recantation just spoken of instructs us thus :

"If it were universally true that madness is evil, the assertion [that we should neglect the lover because he is mad] would be correct. But now But now the greatest blessings we have spring from madness, when granted by divine bounty. For the prophetess at Delphi, and the priestesses at Dodona, have, when mad, done many and noble services for Greece, both privately and publicly, but in their sober senses little or nothing. And if we were to speak of the sybil and others, who, employing prophetic inspiration, have correctly predicted many things to many persons respecting the future, we should be too prolix, in relating what is known to every one. This, however, deserves to be adduced by way of testimony, that such of the ancients as gave names to things, did not consider madness as disgraceful or a cause of reproach; for they would not have attached this very name to that most noble art by which the future is discerned, and have called it a mad art, but considering it noble when it happens by the divine decree, they gave it this name; but the men of the present day, by ignorantly inserting the letter 7, have called it the prophetic art. [uavia is madness, pariky, the mad art, pavrikh, the prophetic art.] Since also with respect to the investigation of the future by people in their senses, which is made by means of birds and other signs, inasmuch as men, by means of reflection, furnished themselves by human thought with intelligence and information, they gave it the name of prognostication, which the moderns, by using the emphatic long w, now called augury. [olovorikh, prognostication, oiwviorikh, augury]. But how much more perfect and valuable then prophecy is than augury, one name than the other, and one effect than the other, by so much did the ancients testify that madness is more noble than sound sense, that which comes from God than that * Knightes Tale. + Phædrus.

which proceeds from man. Moreover, for those dire diseases and afflictions which continued in some families in consequence of ancient crimes committed by some or other of them, madness springing up and prophesying to those to whom it was proper, discovered a remedy, fleeing for refuge to prayers and services of the gods, whence obtaining purifications and atoning rites, it made him who possessed it sound, both for the present and the future, by discovering to him who was rightly mad and possessed, a release from present evils. There is a third possession and madness proceeding from the Muses, which seizing upon a tender and chaste soul, and rousing and inspiring it to the composition of odes and other species of poetry, by adorning the countless deeds of antiquity, instructs posterity. But he who without the madness of the Muses approaches the gates of poesy under the persuasion that by means of art he can become an efficient poet, both himself fails in his purpose, and his poetry, being that of a sane man, is thrown into the shade by the poetry of such as are mad.”*

It is curious and most instructive to observe how the double paradox, contained in the foregoing paragraph from the Phædrus-firstly, that madness is more noble than sound sense; secondly, that so far from being an evil it was in some instances the means of release from evil-has been preserved in its essential character from the time of Plato even to the present time.

For our purpose it is not necessary that we should trace the history of the paradox during the period named, with any degree of minuteness. It will be sufficient for us to show its existence at an intermediate date, and now.

Not every form of insanity was deemed a blessing by Plato, but only such forms as were supposed to be occasioned by the influence of beneficent deities. Hence the philosopher's notions of the evil or good of madness were entirely governed by the mythological ideas of the period in which he lived. Change the form of belief, and we find precisely the same conceptions respecting the nature of madness to have existed among the Christian communities of the middle ages. When the delusions of the insane or the fever-stricken, or the dreams of the ascetic, took a form consistent with the dogmas of the Church, they were hailed as the sure tokens of divine inspiration; when the reverse, as the promptings of the devil. Church history abounds with illustrations of the truthfulness of this opinion.

The Venerable Bede tells us of the holy man Fursey, who "fell into some infirmity of body, and was thought worthy to see a vision from God." This holy man, who lived about A.D. 653, was favoured with certain apocalyptic dreams, and the historian further informs us in regard to him, that "An ancient brother of our monastery is still living, who is wont to declare that a very

* Phædrus. Cary's Trans.

sincere and religious man told him that he had seen Fursey himself in the province of the East Angles, and heard those visions from his mouth; adding, that though it was a most sharp winter weather, and a hard frost, and the man was sitting in a thin garment when he related it, yet he sweated as if it had been in the greatest heat of summer, either through excessive fear, or spiritual consolation."*

Bede also recounts, among other examples of prophetic power, two instances which occurred, one in a child, the other in a nun, at the point of death.

This

In the monastery of Barking (A.D. 676) there was a little boy named Esica, who was about three years of age. child was seized with pestilence, and when dying he called thrice upon one of the consecrated virgins in the monastery, directing his words to her by her own name, as if she had been present, Eadgith! Eadgith! Eadgith! and thus ending his temporal life, entered into that which was eternal. The virgin whom he called, was immediately seized, where she was, with the same distemper, and departing this life the same day on which she had been called, followed him that called her into the heavenly country.”+

One of the nuns in the same monastery, being also seized with pestilence, and reduced to extremity, suddenly began about midnight to cry out to those who attended her, requesting them to extinguish the candle that was lighted there; but no one heeded her. Whereupon she said, “I know you think I speak this in a raving fit, but let me inform you it is not so; for I tell you, that I see this house filled with so much light, that your candle seems to me to be dark.' And when still no one regarded what she said, or ventured any answer, she added, 'Let that candle burn as long as you will; but take notice, that it is not my light, for my light will come to me at the dawn of day.' Then she began to tell, that a certain man of God, who had died that same year, had appeared to her, telling her that at the break of day she should depart to the heavenly light. The truth of which vision was made out by the virgin dying as soon as the day appeared."‡

Still more to our purpose is the account which the venerable historian gives of the development of poetic genius in the Anglo-Saxon poet Cadmon, a brother of the monastery of Streaneshalch (Whitby-A.D. 680). "He was wont," writes Bede, "to make pious and religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of Scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility, in English,

* Ecclesiastical History of England, bk. iii. ch. 19. Dr. Giles's Ed.
† Bede, Eccles. Hist. bk. iv. ch. 8.

which was his native language. By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. Others after him attempted, in the English nation, to compose religious poems; but none could ever compare with him, for he did not learn the art of poetry from man, but from God."

This last sentence is a Christianized form of one of Plato's remarks already quoted from the Phædrus, to the effect that he who assays the poetic art without being possessed of the divine madness of the Muses, will fail in his efforts, and his poetry, being that of a sane man, will be greatly inferior to that of one who is mad.

66

Cædmon, it would appear, on account of the source of his gift, was never able to compose any trivial or vain poem." Sacred themes alone" suited his religious tongue." He had lived in a secular habit until he was far advanced in life, and occasionally was present at entertainments where it was customary, in order to promote mirth, for each guest to sing in succession. But Cædmon, having never learnt anything of versifying, used when the instrument with which the songs were accompanied approached him, to rise up from the table and return home.

"Having done so at a certain time, and gone out of the house where the entertainment was, to the stable, where he had to take care of the horses that night, he there composed himself to rest at the proper time; a person appeared to him in his sleep, and saluting him by his name, said, 'Cædmon, sing some song to me.' He answered, 'I cannot sing; for that was the reason why I left the entertainment, and retired to this place, because I could not sing.' The other who talked to him, replied, However, you shall sing.' 'What shall I sing?' rejoined he. Sing the beginning of created beings,' said the other. Hereupon he presently began to sing verses to the praise of God, which he had never heard. .. Awaking from his sleep, he remembered all that he had sung in his dream, and soon added much more to the same effect in verse worthy of the Deity.

many

"In the morning he came to the steward, his superior, and having acquainted him with the gift he had received, was conducted to the abbess, by whom he was ordered, in the of presence learned men, to tell his dream, and repeat the verses, that they might all give their judgment what it was, and whence his verse proceeded. They all concluded that heavenly grace had been conferred on him by our Lord. They expounded to him a passage in Holy Writ, either historical or doctrinal, ordering him, if he could, to put the same into verse. Having undertaken it, he went away, and returning the next morning, gave it to them composed in most excellent verse; whereupon the abbess, embracing the grace of God in the man, instructed him to quit the secular habit, and take upon him the monastic life; which being