GENIUS AND SUICIDE. 365 



Realf himself said that he thought his mind was obscured at 

 the time. After some years of misery he procured a divorce and 

 remarried. Happiness seemed to be near again, but after two 

 years, upon some technical grounds, the Superior Court reversed 

 the decision of the lower court and declared his divorce illegal. 

 Misfortunes then began to fall thick and fast. His second wife and 

 children, for he had become the father of triplets, grew ill. Ad- 

 ditional heavy drains were made upon his purse by a widowed 

 sister and a paralytic brother, and to add to his cup of bitterness 

 his first wife followed him to California and insisted upon claim- 

 ing support. At last, bowed down and broken by misfortune, 

 worry, and overwork, he ended with laudanum his eventful and 

 unhappy life in the autumn of 1878. He made two attempts be- 

 fore success resulted, and between them composed the poem be- 

 ginning " De mortuis nil nisi bonum," thus reminding us of Mar- 

 cus Lucanus, " the eminent Roman poet of the silver age," who 

 repeated lines from his poems descriptive of death as his life- 

 blood ebbed away. 



If we were to look carefully into the histories of the lives of 

 men of genius, we should find many names to add to the number 

 already mentioned, and still more to swell the list of those who 

 had attempted the deed without meeting with success. 



Haydon, the celebrated historical painter and writer, overcome 

 by debt, disappointment, and ingratitude, laid down the brush 

 with which he was at work upon his last great effort, Alfred and 

 the Trial by Jury, wrote with a steady hand " Stretch me no longer 

 upon this rough world," and then with a pistol-shot put an end to 

 his unhappy existence. 



Richard Payne Knight, the poet, Greek scholar, and antiquary, 

 was a victim of melancholia, and finally destroyed himself with 

 poison. 



Burton, the vivacious author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, 

 who had the reputation of being able to raise laughter in any 

 company, however "mute and mopish," was in reality consti- 

 tutionally depressed, and it is believed that he was at last so 

 overcome by his malady that he ended his life in a fit of melan- 

 choly. 



Kleist, poet and dramatist, brooded over suicide, attempted it 

 once unsuccessfully, and finally, by agreement with Henriette 

 Vogel, who believed herself affected with an incurable disease, re- 

 paired to a small inn near Potsdam, where they ended their lives 

 together. 



Lessmann, the humorous writer, like Burton, put an end to 

 himself in a fit of melancholy. 



Sir Samuel Romilly, a man of brilliant genius, by whose efforts 

 the criminal laws of England were remodeled — a man loved for 



