sects have aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained *." The history of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove how their delusions consisted of the ocular spectra of their brain, and the accelerated sensations of their nerves. Bayle has conjured up an amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms agitating his brain might so disorder his mind as to expose him to spectral visions; and being very timid, and distrusting his own imagination, he was averse at times to be left alone. Apparitions often happen in dreams, but they may happen to a man when awake, for reading and hearing of them would revive their images, and these images might play, even an incredulous philosopher, some unlucky trick.

But men of genius whose enthusiasm has

* Mr. Charles Butler has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical Devotion.". Norris, and Dr. Henry More, and Bishop Berkley may be consulted by the

curious.

not been past recovery, have experienced this extraordinary state of the mind, in those exhaustions of study to which they unquestionably are subject. Tissot, on "The Health of Men of Letters," has produced a terrifying number of cases. They see and hear what none but themselves do. Genius thrown into this peculiar state, has produced some noble effusions. KOTZEBUE was once absorbed in hypochondriacal melancholy, and appears to have meditated on self-destruction; but it happened, that he preserved his habit of dramatic composition, and produced one of his most energetic dramas-that of "Misanthropy and Repentance." He tells us, that he had never experienced such a rapid flow of thoughts and images, and he believed, what a physiological history would perhaps show, that there are some maladies, those of the brain and the nerves, which actually stretch the powers of the mind beyond their usual reach. It is the more vivid world of ideal existence!

But what is more evident, men of the finest genius have experienced these hallucinations in

society acting on their moral habits. They have insulated the mind; with them ideas have become realities, and suspicions certainties; while events have been noted down as seen and heard which in truth had never occurred. RoUSSEAU'S phantoms scarcely ever quitted him for a day; BARRY imagined that he was invisibly persecuted by the Royal Academy, who had even spirited up a gang of housebreakers; the vivid memoirs of ALFIERI will authenticate what DONNE, who himself had suffered from them, calls "these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of the senses." Too often this man of genius, with a vast and solitary power, darkens the scene of life; he has built a pyramid between himself and the sun. Mocking at the expedients by which society has contrived to protect its feebleness, he would break down the institutions from which he has shrunk away in the loneliness of his feelings. Such is the insulating intellect to which some of the most elevated spirits have been reduced:-to imbue ourselves with the genius of their works, even to think of them, is an awful thing! In nature their existence

VOL. II.

D

is a solecism as their genius is a paradox; for their crimes seem to be without guilt, their curses have kindness in them, and if they afflict mankind it is in sorrow.

Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchaseprice of high passion and invention? Perhaps never has there been a man of genius of this rare cast, who has not betrayed the ebullitions of imagination in some outward action, at that period when the illusions of life are more real to genius than its realities. There is a fata morgana, that throws into the air a pictured land, and the believing eye trusts till the visionary hues fade away. A slight derangement of our accustomed habits, a little perturbation of the faculties, and a romantic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent promise of genius; of that generous temper which knowing nothing of the baseness of mankind, with indefinite views carries on some glorious design to charm the world or to make it happier. Often we hear, from the confessions of men of genius, of their having indulged in the puerile state the most elevating and the most chimerical pro

jects; and if age ridicules the imaginative existence of its youth, be assured that it is the decline of its genius. That virtuous and tender enthusiast, FENELON, in his early youth, troubled his friends with a classical and religious reverie. He was on the point of quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with the piety of a missionary, and with the taste of a classical antiquary. The Peloponnesus opened to him the church of Corinth where St. Paul preached, the Piræus where Socrates conversed; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe. Such was the influence of the ideal presence! and barren will be his imagination, and luckless his fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has never been touched by such a temporary delirium.

To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the self-immolation of men of genius. Mighty and laborious works have been pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain destruction of the fortune of the individual. Vast labours attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their progress.