36 PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 



" With a heart of furious fancies, 

 Of which I am commander, 

 With a burning spear 

 And a horse of air 

 To the wilderness I wander. 

 With a knight of ghosts and shadows 

 I summoned am to tournay, 

 Ten leagues beyond 

 The wide world's end 

 Methinks it is no journey." 



The lecturer then mentioned the madness of King Lear, which he 

 spoke of as being highly natural, and alluded to the skill of the poet 

 in allowing the cause to be occasionally seen through the maniac's 

 ravings. He next proceeded to criticise Hamlet, whom he supposes 

 to have been a melancholic. He remarked the tendency to self des- 

 truction, which the soliloquies of Hamlet show to have existed in 

 his mind, and thinks that the poet erred in grafting upon Ham- 

 let's real and constitutional melancholy, a simulation of insanity. 



Having made slight mention of Ophelia's distraction, Mr. S. pro- 

 ceeded to say that, we need not confine ourselves to the fictions of 

 the poet's frenzy, nor look long on real life for example. 



" The unmatched form and feature of blown youth 

 Blasted with extacy." 



He remarked that, high intellectual powers did not exempt their 

 possessors from the attacks of this fearful malady, but that the en- 

 thusiasm, and too intense operations of genius, combined with its 

 excitability, and the misfortunes to which it is subject, too often lead 

 to the production of insanity. In support of this opinion he ad- 

 duced the names of Swift, Cowley, Collins, Cowper, Byron and 

 others, who were more or less afflicted with insanity. 



The lecturer is inclined to refer the irrunediate cause of every in- 

 stance of insanity to the brain, which may be functionally or organ- 

 ically diseased. He thinks that we shall never be enabled to 

 discover the exact nature of the change which takes place in the 

 brain during insanity, till we have arrived at some definite notion 

 as to the manner in which that organ acts when in health. 



The lecturer concluded his paper in the following words : 



At present, as we can estimate the value of our capacities only 

 through the medium of their fragile and distempered instruments, 

 so must we expect to find them indistinctly and irregularly mani- 

 fested. The greatest of human attainments has but led us to the 

 portal of knowledge, and through it we have caught a glimpse of 

 the vast domain which lies within. If we attempt further progress 



