CHAPTER XV.

APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING OBSERVATIONS.

The history of men of genius affords abundant proof that the habits of literary men are unfavourable to health, and that constant application to those studies, whose acknowledged tendency is to exalt the intellect, and to enlarge the faculties of the mind, are nevertheless productive of consequences similar to those which arise from physical infirmities. The conversation of a poet," says Goldsmith," is that of a man of sense, while his actions are those of a fool."

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There is no reason why folly should emanate from poetry; but we have reason enough to know that many mental infirmities arise from sedentary habits and their accompanying evils; yet in the face of modern biography, it requires a little courage to assert that bodily disease has an influence over the feelings, temper, or sensibility of studious men, and that it gives a colour to character, which it is often impossible to discriminate by any other light than that of medical philosophy. In the following pages we purpose to illustrate this opinion, by referring to the lives of a few of those individuals, the splendour of whose career has brought, not only their frailties, but their peculiarities into public notice, and by pointing out, in each instance, those deviations from health which deserve to be taken into account in fairly considering the literary character.

The most frequent disorders of literary men are dys

pepsia and hypochondria, and in extreme cases, the termination of these maladies is in some cerebral disorder, either mania, epilepsy, or paralysis, and these we intend to notice in the order of their succession in the following brief sketches of the physical infirmities of Pope, Johnson, Burns, Cowper, Byron, and, lastly, Scott, in whose case the absence of the ordinary errors of genius, may be ascribed in a great measure to well-regulated habits, which certainly were not those of the others above mentioned.

POPE.

For about three quarters of a century the public laboured under the delusion that Pope was a poet, and moreover a man of tolerable morals, till an amiable clergyman, instigated no doubt by the most laudable motives, took upon himself to disabuse the world of its error, and to pull down the reputation of Homer's translator from the eminence it had undeservedly attained. It was an adventurous task, and one which required a mind fraught with all the fervour of literary controversy, and actuated solely by an honest detestation of false pretensions and flagrant imposition, He had to invalidate the title of an impostor to literary immortality; he had to impugn the character of a man who is supposed to have had some virtues, and whose failings had unfortunately been almost forgotten; and verily, the task was performed with signal intrepidity, though not perhaps with complete success. A troublesome opponent took the field in defence of a brother bard's disparaged fame, and he laid about him like one who was accustomed to

spare no critic in his rage, and no reviewer in his anger. The distinction of being attacked by such an adversary was the only advantage to be gained by the contest; but this advantage was purchased at the expense of considerable punishment. The controversy was a hot one, and the fame of the individual who was the subject of the quarrel had to pass through an ordeal of fire; but phœnix-like, the character of the poet rose triumphant from the flames, albeit the conduct of the man came forth, not altogether unscathed by the conflagration. Not even Byron's genius could rescue the memory of Pope from the obloquy of the long forgotten errors that had been raked up by the indefatigable industry of his opponent; for in attempting to palliate those errors, the bodily infirmities of the victim of the controversy were overlooked, and no satisfactory explanation was given of that peevishness of temper, and waywardness of humour, which unquestionably tarnished the character of this favourite-we had almost said, this spoiled child of genius.

The following references to his habits and temperament may probably throw some little light on the nature of his failings, and tend even to remove the impression which the animadversions of Mr. Bowles may have produced. "By natural deformity, or accidental distortion," we are told by Johnson, "the vital functions of Pope were so much disordered, that his life was a long disease." The deformity alluded to arose from an affection of the spine, contracted in infancy, and to which the extreme delicacy of his constitution is to be attributed.

When it is recollected that the nerves which supply the abdominal viscera with the energy that is essential to their functions, are derived from the spinal column, the cause of the disorder of his digestive powers during the

whole of his life is easily conceived. As he advanced in life the original complaint ceased to make any further progress, and its effects on his constitution might have been removed by due attention to regimen and exercise; but instead of these, active medicines and stimulating diet were the means he constantly employed of temporarily palliating the exhaustion, and obviating the excitement consequent on excessive mental application. None of his biographers, indeed, allude to his having suffered from indigestion; and it is even possible that he might not have been himself aware of the nature of those anomalous symptoms of dyspepsia, which mimic the form of `every other malady; those symptoms of giddiness, languor, dejection, palpitation of the heart, constant headache, dimness of sight, occasional failure of the mental powers, exhaustion of nervous energy, depriving the body of vital heat, and the diminution of muscular strength, without a corresponding loss of flesh, he frequently complains of; and every medical man is aware, that they are the characteristic symptoms of dyspepsia.

One patient calls his disorder spleen, another nervousness, another melancholy, another irritability: the medical nomenclature is no less prolific, but all their titles are for a single malady, and "not one of them," says Dr. James Johnson, in his admirable treatise on the "Morbid Sensibility of the Stomach," "expresses the real nature of the malady, but only some of its multiform symptoms. Of all these designations, indigestion has been the most hacknied title, and it is, in my opinion, the most erroneous. The very worst forms of the disease-forms in which the body is tortured for years, and the mind ultimately wrecked, often exhibit no sign or proof of indi

gestion, in the ordinary sense of the word, the appetite being good, the digestion apparently complete."

The fact is, that where pain is not the character of the disease, the attention of the patient is carried to the symptoms in organs, perhaps the remotest from the cause; and in this particular disorder the patient is seldom or ever sensible of pain in the actual seat of it.

We are told by Pope's biographer, "that the indulgence and accommodation that his sickness required, had taught him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinarian man." And in various other passages we are informed that he was irascible, capricious, peevish, and resentful; often wanton in his attacks, and unjust in his censures; that he delighted in artifice in his intercourse with mankind, so that he could hardly drink tea without a stratagem; that his cunning sometimes descended to such petty parsimony as writing his composition on the backs of letters, by which perhaps he might have saved five shillings in five years, (a crime against stationary, by the way, which he shared in common with Sir Walter Scott,) that although he occasionally gave a splendid dinner, and was enabled to do so on an income of about eight hundred a year, his entertainment was often scanty to his friends, and he was capable of setting a single pint upon the table, and saying to his guests when he retired, "Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine." We are told, moreover, that his satire had often in it more of petulance, personality, and malignity, than of moral design, or a desire to refine the public taste.

These are serious charges against the justice and amiability of his character; and probably there is a great deal of truth in them, but they only apply to his character, not to his disposition.