GENIUS AND SUICIDE. 361 



persons, he always entertained courteously. Besides his mother- 

 tongue, the Bohemian, he also knew Latin, German, and French. 

 From the papers he left there was printed, after his death, a 

 treatise entitled Langst verlangte Theorie der meteorologischen 

 Electricitat (The Long-sought Theory of Atmospheric Electrici- 

 ty), Tubingen, 1768. 



Prokop Divis is an interesting example of an ideal scholar. 

 Originally he studied science merely for the sake of finding out 

 the truth ; but when he saw that the truths discovered by him 

 could be utilized for the benefit of mankind, he utilized them. 

 Undoubtedly he knew nothing of Franklin, and there is no 

 evidence that Franklin ever heard of Divis ; their discoveries in 

 electricity were wholly independent of each other. But Franklin 

 was the happier of the two because he found a people who under- 

 stood him — the French; while Divis, by his social position, was 

 prevented from perfecting his instrument. We must remember 

 that Benjamin Franklin was a public man, who stood conspicu- 

 ously before three countries, while Prokop Divis was merely a 

 parish priest of a small Bohemian village, with few or no connec- 

 tions. Yet we admire his genius evinced by inventions so vastly 

 different — a lightning-rod and a musical instrument. These are 

 wittily characterized in his epitaph, written by one of his contem- 

 poraries : 



"Ne laudate Iovem, gentes! quid vester Apollo? 

 Iste magis deus est fulminis atque soni." * 



GENIUS AND SUICIDE. 



By CHARLES W. PILGRIM, M. D. 



WINSLOW, in his Anatomy of Suicide, says, " A person who 

 accustoms himself to live in a world created by his own 

 fancy, who surrounds himself with flimsy idealities, will, in the 

 course of time, cease to sympathize with the gross realities of 

 life," and any one who will take the trouble to read the biogra- 

 phies of men of genius will see that this statement is borne out 

 to a remarkable degree. Probably the most striking example of 

 this doctrine, as well as the most pathetic instance of suicide in 

 the annals of literature, is found in the records of Chatterton's 

 short life. From the beginning shadows hovered over him. He 

 was the posthumous child of a poor widow, whose dead husband 

 had been a rough, drunken fellow, and a singer and subchanter 

 in the cathedral choir of Bristol. The mother supported herself 



* " Do not praise Jove, Dations ! What is your Apollo ? 



This man, rather, is a god of both the lightning and the sound." 



