The Philosophy of Mystery · 8 of 35

Poetic Phantasy, or Frenzy

“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth—from earth to heaven.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings

A local habitation, and a name.”

Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Astr. Is there so potent a charm in poppies, Evelyn? You will make us believe, soon, that opium can make a Shakspere, that genius can be imparted by a drug.

The ghosts of fairyland, those bright emanations of a poet’s fancy, which are wafted through the air on the thistle-down, or swing to and fro on the filmy thread of the gossamer, sprang from a deeper source than this. The fairy mythology of Shakspere, the beautiful creations of the “Tempest” and the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” are the very offspring of that innate genius, that “exhausted worlds, and then imagined new.”

Those exquisite and tricksy spirits, the mischievous Puck and the delicate Ariel, indeed, the whole train of ghosts which appeared to Macbeth, and Richard, and Clarence, and Brutus, and Hamlet, and the spirits of the “Midsummer Night,” the “Tempest,” and “Macbeth,” of Bolingbroke and Joan of Arc, could not have been so painted, unless they had stood before the mind of Shakspere as palpable as reality.

Look, too, on those splendid illustrations of the Gothic poets by the eccentric, or, as Evelyn would call him, the half-mad Fuseli. Look on the wild pencillings of Blake, another poet painter, and you will be assured that they were ghost-seers. An intimate friend of Blake, himself a reader of the stars, has told me the strangest tales of his visions. In one of his reveries he witnessed the whole ceremony of a fairy’s funeral, which he peopled with mourners and mutes, and described with high poetic beauty. He was engaged, in one of these moods, in painting King Edward I., who was sitting to him for his picture. While they were conversing, Wallace suddenly presented himself on the field, and by this uncourteous intrusion marred the studies of the painter for that day.

Ev. A most unhappy comparison, Astrophel. The difference between Shakspere and Blake is antipodean. Blake was a visionary, and thought his fancies real—he was mad. Shakspere was a philosopher, and knew all his fancy was but imagination, however real might be the facts he wrought from. Ben Jonson told Drummond that he lay awake one whole night, gazing in mute admiration on his great toe; surrounding which, in miniature, appeared the inhabitants of Rome, and Carthage, and Tartary, and Turkey; but he also was aware of the illusion.

Cast. My most gracious smile is yours, Evelyn, for this honour to my sweet Shakspere. I pray you accord the same to the spectral visions of a poet, in whose beautiful Aminta each line is a breath of inspiration—the day-dreams of the elegant Tasso. Listen.

“At Bisaccio, Manso had an opportunity to examine the singular effects of Tasso’s melancholy; and often disputed with him concerning a familiar spirit which he pretended to converse with. Manso endeavoured in vain to persuade his friend that the whole was the illusion of a disturbed imagination; but the latter was strenuous in maintaining the reality of what he asserted; and, to convince Manso, desired him to be present at one of these mysterious conversations. Manso had the complaisance to meet him the next day, and while they were engaged in discourse, on a sudden he observed that Tasso kept his eyes fixed upon a window, and remained in a manner immoveable; he called him by his name several times, but received no answer. At last Tasso cried out, ‘There is the friendly spirit who is come to converse with me: look, and you will be convinced of the truth of all that I have said.’ Manso heard him with surprise: he looked, but saw nothing except the sunbeams darting through the window; he cast his eyes all over the room, but could perceive nothing, and was just going to ask where the pretended spirit was, when he heard Tasso speak with great earnestness, sometimes putting questions to the spirit, and sometimes giving answers, delivering the whole in such a pleasing manner, and with such elevated expressions, that he listened with admiration, and had not the least inclination to interrupt him. At last this uncommon conversation ended with the departure of the spirit, as appeared by Tasso’s words, who, turning towards Manso, asked him if his doubts were removed. Manso was more amazed than ever; he scarce knew what to think of his friend’s situation, and waived any further conversation on the subject.”

Ev. I shall forfeit your smile, sweet Castaly, or change it, alas! for a frown. I have ever thought Tasso a monomaniac, for he yielded to his illusion. I can give you in a fragment from Lorry, the counterpart of Tasso’s phantasy in a far different mind. “During these paroxysms she would talk, and was accustomed to address herself to some one individual present, with whom she conversed at first in an obscure voice, but afterwards in a distinct and audible manner. She evidently perceived him, and observed all his gestures; but all she said to him bore a reference to one idea, on which she was intent. In the mean time she appeared not to see or hear any other person, even if he exerted his voice to the utmost to make himself heard. This fact I witnessed with the greatest astonishment, but many other persons are living who can attest it. The mother of this female died unexpectedly, after which the daughter used to hold conversations with her as if she was present. She would answer questions as if interrogated by her mother; would entreat her to take care of her health, and recommend some physician as more able to restore her than others. Moreover, she would talk to her mother of her destined marriage, although it had already been some time completed, in a manner perfectly like that of a sane and modest young woman, making some objections to it, and replying to others, and appeared to be revealing all her secret wishes; in a word, she seemed perfectly collected and rational, excepting the error respecting time, and the supposed presence of her mother. This woman had in other respects good health, but was afraid of the smallest noise, and was easily affected by any thing she saw or heard. At length she fell into a consumption.”

In other cases, especially in accomplished minds, the phantasy is usually combined with derangement of health. A very ingenuous and elegant young lady, about the age of seventeen, was suddenly seized with catalepsy. It commenced with violent convulsions of almost every muscle of her body, and the most distressing hiccoughs. In about an hour came on a fixed spasm, one hand being placed against her head, and the other to support it. In about half an hour more, the spasm subsided, and then began the reverie in a moment, her eyes and expression indicating a fixed attention. She then conversed with imaginary persons, her eyes being wide open, and during this ecstasy she was completely insensible to the most irritating, and indeed most violent stimuli.

Sir Henry Halford related to us, that on a visit to a person of exalted rank in his chamber, he heard him with great energy request Garrick to play a scene in “Hamlet,” reminding him of the lines in Horace’s Epistles:

“Haud ignobilis Argis,

Qui se credebat miros audire tragœdos,

In vacuo lætus sessor plausorque theatro.”

In Dr. Darwin, too, we read of an epileptic girl, who during a fit of reverie, when insensible to all external stimuli, conversed fluently with imaginary people, and was surprised to hear of her illusions when fully awake.

And, in Andral, of a gentleman of distinguished ability, who believed that an absent friend was sitting among his guests, welcoming him to his table, and, with great courtesy, handing him a chair. You remember how pathetically Crabbe has illustrated this illusion in his poem of “Sir Eustace Gray.”

Cast. Hark to the profane philosopher who associates poetry with madness! Tell me, Master Evelyn, while you wandered in the Water walks of Magdalene, with the balmy breezes of heaven around your brow, and the mellow sunbeam streaming through the green leaves upon your cheek, with the inspired volumes of Virgil, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, breathing nature in all the lines of their beautiful idylls—while Astrophel, perchance, was musing among cobwebs in Friar Bacon’s study—tell me, felt you not the sublimity and truth of poesy? You remind me of the quaint tradition among the shepherds of Snowdonia, that if two persons lie down, on midsummer eve, to sleep upon a certain rock on Snowdon, one will wake a poet, the other a maniac. I pr’ythee, think otherwise of Tasso, whose reveries were an ecstasy of bright thoughts. Even when the light of day is eclipsed, as when the senseless orbs of Homer and Milton were merged in “ever-during dark,” the thoughts of a poet may be deeper and clearer for the gloom.

Ida. And so pure and holy withal. In the “Defensio Secunda,” I remember this gem of sentiments:—“Involved in darkness, not so much from the imperfection of our optic powers, as from the shadow of the Creator’s wings,—a darkness which he frequently irradiates with an inner and far superior light.”

Never did poet feel more intensely than Milton the truth of that divine thought, that “the shadow of God is light.”

Cast. And call up that glory of the Elizabethan age, Philip Sidney, whose life, in the words of Campbell, was “a poetry in action,” and who more than embodied the brightest pictures of Tasso and Ariosto, and eclipsed the glory of that Chevalier Bayard, like himself, “sans peur et sans reproche.”

Ev. I cry you mercy, fairest ladies, I speak not of the light of poetry, but of its shadows. Cheromania is the first form of monomania, or the madness of one idea; and this is marked by cheerfulness and splendid ideas, which indeed often tend to mitigate the melancholy scenes of derangement, as if “the light that led astray was light from heaven.” I will illustrate this by repeating to you the letter to his brother, of a young officer, whose progressive changes of mind, from excitement to confirmed mania, it was my duty to watch over.

December 4th, 1832.

“To ——, Esq.

“I am Lord President of the Counsil, a most honorable situation, and the richest gift of the Crown, which brings me in seven thousand pounds every year. The Counsil consists of Three Secretaries of State, of which I am one; and the Paymaster of the Forces. When the King William the forth shall die, then shall I be crowned King of England, and be crowned in Westermister Abbey, By The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. I shall on the occasion of my coronation have placed in the different street of London one thousand pipes of wine for my people, and at night in the Hyde Park a magnificent display of Fireworks, and one hundred pieces of Artillery shall fire three rounds for the amusement of my people and subjects. I have only now to give you a list of my titles and honors:

“King of England.

First Heir Presumptive to the Crown.

Major General and Field Martial.

Duke of Leitzep.

Prince of Denmark.

Lord President of the Counsil.

Knight Banneret.

Lord Treasurer of the Exchequer.

Lieutenant Colonel ——, Lord and Baronet.

Aid de Camp to the King.

Champion of England.

“Dear ——, I wish to acquaint you that Windsor Castle belongs to me, that the palace of Brighton also belongs to me, also I purchased from the Duke of Wellington the splendid park and Palace of Stratfieldsea, wherein there are very extensive Forests of Oak and of Pines trees, together with a magnificent sheet of Water containing Ells and Salmon Trout.

“Dear ——, I have to beg that you give my love and duty to your wife—and give this letter to read, I pray you, according to my desire and wish.”

I may tell you that the very onset of frenzy is often but an elevated spirit of poesy, in which brilliancy and judgment shall be companions; but, like Æsop’s bow, the mind shall be warped and wrung by being constantly bent on its subject; and thus the source of brilliancy and wit may be the source of madness. A change of subject will often do much to unbend such a mind, as a change of posture will relieve muscular fatigue, or as a sudden impression of fear or fright has thwarted a suicide on the moment of his self-attempt. Indeed mania will often appear to induce an almost inspired talent, which, I may hint to you, may be explained by the oxygenizing of the blood in the brain.

In Van Swiéten, we read of a working female who, during fits of insanity, displayed the faculty of rhyming, or poetic talent; and (as I am fond of analogy) in Pinel, of one who, during his insane moments, argued (as if from concentrated memory) in an acute and intelligent manner, on the events of the Revolution.

Then Haller tells us of an idiot, who was wounded on the head, and, during its healing, the intellect became lucid (and this on the principle of a counteraction); but, on the healing being completed, again the creature was an idiot.

When we are roaming over the flowery fields of poesy, we are seldom inclined to reflect on the mental labour by which they are embellished. We may suppose that, whatever is born of the brain is ushered in by an easy birth; but poesy is often attended by a pang of parturition, and one single line may rankle in the brain for hours ere it struggle into light; and, perhaps, require a frontal blow, as violent as that which cleft the skull of Jupiter and gave birth to Pallas.

There are some minds which can support the effort of composition with impunity; but when we recollect the diseases which are entailed on genius—the melancholy of Cowper, and the distraction of the amiable Collins, who

“passed in madd’ning pain life’s feverish dream,

While rays of genius only served to show

The thick’ning horror, and exalt his woe;”

when we remember the gloomy setting of the brilliant sun of Scott, during the period of his apoplectic tendency, when his letter “filled the minds of his publishers with dismay,” and he sunk into the delusive hope that his debts were liquidated to the full; when we are told that Ariosto was never seen to laugh, and rarely to smile; that Rousseau was ever restless, and on the verge of mania; when we reflect on the premature decay of unhappy White —

“When science self destroyed her fav’rite son;”

on the painful conflicts of Byron, when his dark hour was on him; on Chatterton, “the sleepless boy who perish’d in his pride:” are incited, almost unconsciously to echo the apostrophe of Wordsworth: —

“We poets in our youth begin in gladness,

But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.”

Ida. The laurel, then, contains more poison than that of prussic acid in its leaf. The perils of romance are not ever in these extremes; yet the mere indulgence of poetic thoughts may so raise the beau-ideal of beauty in the sensitive and youthful mind, as to unfit it for the common duties of life. Like Narcissus, the heart perishes for love of its own shadow. It becomes so acutely sensitive, as to “die of a rose in aromatic pain:” or like the Sybarite, it cannot sleep, because a crumpled rose-leaf lay beneath the pillow.

I have often thought that the secret of happiness may lie in this precept: “Take the good of life as it is, a divine gift, and not an agreeable deception;” when evil is in your path, search its cause, analyze its nature, and if you discover not that you have yourself to thank for it, at least you may prove that the evil itself is made up of mere trifles, and thus you will learn to be resigned.

And with the beauty and treasures of earth: if you possess them, enjoy them with a prudent and a grateful heart. If they belong to others, sigh not—pine not for them, but analyze them also, and you may find that the hope of their enjoyment was a phantom; for aggregated beauties are often made up of deformed or unlovely atoms.

I might illustrate my remarks by relating to you an episode of the life of my young friend Stanmore; from which I learned, with sorrow, that the heart may droop beneath its own excess of sensibility, (a mystery to those who were strangers to its secret,) and that the blossom of love may be self-blighted:

“His existence was a withered hope, that, like the icicle in the cup of the early flower, freezes the life-spring in which it is so deeply embosomed. In his mind was lighted a vision of Elysium, beyond what earth with all its virtue and beauty could give him: a spectral Utopia. His life was a blank. He found not happiness, because he knew not contentment. He was the leader of many a forlorn hope in Spain, and fell in a midnight enterprise among the guerillas in the Sierra Morena.”

Ev. And had the sword spared him, he would have died a moral suicide.

What folly, thus to chase a butterfly, instead of yielding to the virtuous influence of woman, which, beyond aught else, softens and ennobles man’s heart; entrancing it in floods of human passion, which, with all its pains, yields happiness a thousand-fold more than the maudlin sentiments of Rousseau, that, reducing love to a mere phantom, leave the lone heart to prey on its own sensibility.

Such was the romantic poet of Endymion, who for the phantom of his waking dreams, gave up the study of that science, which might have nursed and fortified a mind, so soon chilled to death by the icy finger of criticism. Erato was the mistress of John Keats; but while he wooed, he perished: like the Rosicrucian, who, to save the life of his lady, took the oath of celibacy, and thus lost her love for ever. Even in the lecture-room of Saint Thomas’s, I have seen Keats in a deep poetic dream: his mind was on Parnassus with the muses. And here is a quaint fragment which he one evening scribbled in our presence, while the precepts of Sir Astley Cooper fell unheeded on his ear: —

“Whenne Alexandre the Conqueroure was wayfayringe in y e londe of Inde, there mette hym a damoselle of marveillouse beautie slepynge uponne the herbys and flourys. He colde ne loke uponne her withouten grete plesance, and he was welle nighe loste in wondrement. Her forme was everyche whytte lyke y e fayrest carvynge of Quene Cythere, onlie thatte y t was swellyd and blushyd wyth warmthe and lyffe wythalle.

“Her forhed was as whytte as ys the snowe whyche y e talle hed of a Norwegian pyne stelythe from y e northerne wynde. One of her fayre hondes was yplaced thereonne, and thus whytte wyth whytte was ymyngld as y e gode Arthure saythe, lyke whytest lylys yspredde on whyttest snowe; and her bryghte eyne whenne she them oped, sparklyd lyke Hesperus through an evenynge cloude.

“Theye were yclosyd yn slepe, save that two slauntynge raies shotte to her mouthe, and were theyre bathyd yn swetenesse, as whenne bye chaunce y e moone fyndeth a banke of violettes and droppethe thereonne y e sylverie dewe.

“The authoure was goynge onne withouthen descrybynge y e ladye’s breste, whenne lo, a genyus appearyd—‘Cuthberte,’ sayeth he, ‘an thou canst not descrybe y e ladye’s breste, and fynde a simile thereunto, I forbyde thee to proceede yn thy romaunt.’ Thys, I kennd fulle welle, far surpassyd my feble powres, and forthwythe I was fayne to droppe my quille.”