190 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



would be extreme. With senses more delicate and refined, with 

 perceptions more acute and penetrating, with a taste so exquisite 

 that the objects around him would by no means gratify it, obliged 

 to feed on nourishment too gross for his mental frame, he must 

 be born only to be miserable ; and the continuation of his existence 

 would be utterly impossible. Even in our present condition, the 

 sameness and insipidity of objects and pursuits, the futility of plea- 

 sure, and the infinite sources of excruciating pain, are supported 

 with difficulty by cultivated and refined minds. Increase our 

 sensibilities, continue the same objects and desires, and no man 

 could bear to live." 



This is a faithful description of the temperament of the man of 

 genius — of a mind endowed with qualities which common spirits 

 can neither fathom nor understand. A mind of this stamj) discovers 

 beauty, where others see nothing but deformity ; and retires with 

 disgust from what the vulgar approach with satisfaction and plea- 

 sure. It at once detects a more luscious sweetness in the honey, 

 but feels a more exquisite torture from the sting. 



Genius combined with poverty is, of all conditions, that which is 

 productive of most mental misery to its possessor. Even when 

 united to competency, or wealth, the mental constitution of its 

 owner is far from desirable, as the instances of Byron and Rous- 

 seau, Shenstone and Gray, among numerous others, sufficiently 

 prove : but when obliged to minister to the selfishness, to feed the 

 pride, or bend under the tyranny of beings it despises and hates, 

 is it to be wondered at that the imagination is full of melancholy 

 images, which are the more aggravated and distressing since the 

 objects or causes which produce them are painted to the fancy of 

 such minds with a strength and vividness of colouring which they 

 do not really deserve ? 



It is to relieve feelings such as these that men of superior talents 

 and attainments have had recourse to stimuli of various kinds, to 

 dispel the dark phantoms of the imagination, and people it with 

 objects and ideas of a brighter and more pleasing cast: and though 

 the fumes of tobacco, in the cases of Newton and Hobbes ; coffee, 

 in those of Voltaire and Fontenelle ; and cold water, in Demos- 

 thenes and Haller; have been the agents resorted to for this pur- 



