THE INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS ILLUSTRATED BY REFERRING THE ANOMALIES IN THE LITERARY CHARACTER, TO THE HABITS AND CONSTITUTIONAL PECULIARITIES OF MEN OF GENIUS. BY 00 R. R. MADDEN, ESQ. AUTHOR OF "TRÅVELS IN TURKEY," &e. Qui ratione corporis non habent, sed cogunt mortalem immor- THE INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS. CHAPTER I. COWPER. A FEW centuries ago, the clergy were entrusted with the care of the health of the community, either because the healing art was held in such respect, that it was derogatory to its dignity to suffer laymen to perform the high duties of so noble a profession, or because the crative nature of a medical monopoly was as well understood. by the church in the dark ages, as it is by the college in these enlightened times. The faculty, however, flourished in the cloister, and the learned monk and the skilful leech were one and the same person. A great deal of good, and no doubt a certain quantity of evil resulted from the combination of the two vocations: of the good, it is sufficient to remember that the clergy acquired a two-fold claim to the gratitude, and also to the generosity, of the public; of the evil, we need only reflect on the extent of the influence conjoined— of the priest and the physician-to tremble at the power as well as at the result of their coalition. We know not, however, whether this evil may not have been counterbalanced, in some degree, by the advantage of the superior opportunities afforded the medical divine, of distinguishing the nature of moral maladies combined with physical, or confounded with them; and of discovering the source of those anomalies in both, which puzzle the separate consideration of the doctor, and the divine. Plato, indeed, says that "all the diseases of the body proceed from the soul;" if such were the case, physic should prefer the service of theology to the ministry of nature. But the quaintest of authors, and at the same time most orthodox of churchmen, disseits from the opinion of the philosopher. "Surely," he says, "if the body brought an action against the soul, the soul would certainly be cast and convicted, that, by her supine negligence, had caused such inconvenience, having authority over the body." Be this as it may, Time, the oldest radical, who revolutionizes all things, has remodelled the constitution of physic: the divine has ceased to be a doctor; and Taste, no less innovatory than Time, has divested the former of his cowl, and the latter of his wig; but science, it is to be hoped, has gained by the division of its labour, as well as by the change of its costume. We had, however, almost forgotten the point to which we meant our observations to apply. Cowper's malady being connected with certain delusions on the subject of religion, the attention of serious people has been very much called to his history, and the result has been, that most of the biographical details and memoirs of him, have been written by clergymen. Hayley's "Life" is an exception, and a recent one by Taylor, which, in a religious point of view, is unexceptionable. But its fault, like that of all the others, of its class, is, that while the character of Cowper is tried by all the tests that morality can apply to it, the specific malady which occasioned or influenced his hallucinations is left unnoticed; and the mystery of his religious despondency is still involved in the same obscurity in which they found it. They have looked upon his gloom as a supernatural visitation, and not a human infirmity, which was explicable on any known principle of medical science. One of them has even hinted at the impiety of referring his religious gloom to any physical peculiarity. The consequence is, that Cowper's fate has not even the advantage of furnishing a salutary example of melancholy, ex |