CHAPTER XII.

The enthusiasm of genius.-A state of mind resembling a waking dream distinct from reverie.-The ideal presence distinguished from the real presence.-The senses are really affected in the ideal world, proved by a variety of instances.Of the rapture or sensation of deep study in art, in science, and literature.-Of perturbed feelings in delirium.-In extreme endurance of attention.-And in visionary illusions.-Enthusiasts in literature and art-of their self immolations.

We left the man of genius in the stillness of meditation. We have now to pursue his history through that more excited state which occurs in the most active operations of genius, and which the term reverie inadequately indicates. Metaphysical distinctions but ill describe it, and popular language affords no terms for those faculties and feelings which escape the observation of the multitude not affected by the phenomenon.

The illusion produced by a drama on persons of great sensibility, when all the senses are awakened by a mixture of reality with imagination, is the effect experienced by men of genius in their own vivified ideal world. Real emotions are raised by fiction. In a scene, apparently passing in their presence, where the whole train of circumstances succeeds in all the continuity of nature, and where a sort of real existences appear to rise up before them, they themselves become spectators or actors. Their sympathies are excited, and the exterior organs of sense are visibly affected-they even break out into speech, and often accompany their speech with gestures.

In this equivocal state the enthusiast of genius produces his master pieces. This waking dream is distinct from reverie, where, our thoughts wandering without connexion, the faint impressions are so evanescent as to occur without even being recollected. A day of reverie is beautifully painted by ROUSSEAU as distinct from a day of thinking ; "J'ai des journées délicieuses, errant sans souci, sans pro

jet, sans affaire, de bois en bois, et de rocher en rocher, rêvant toujours et ne pensant point." Far different, however, is one closely-pursued act of meditation, carrying the enthusiast of genius beyond the precinct of actual existence. The act of contemplation then creates the thing contemplated. He is now the busy actor in a world which he himself only views; alone, he hears, he sees, he touches, he laughs, he weeps; his brows and lips, and his very limbs move.

Poets and even painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes witches, "are imaginative," have often involuntarily betrayed, in the act of composition, those gestures which accompany this enthusiasm. Witness DOMENICHINO enraging himself that he might portray anger. Nor were these creative gestures quite unknown to QUINTILIAN, who has nobly compared them to the lashings of the lion's tail, rousing him to combat. Actors of genius have accustomed themselves to walk on the stage for an hour before the curtain was drawn, that they might fill their minds with all the phantoms of the drama, and so suspend all communion with the external world. The great actress of our age, during representation, always had the door of her dressingroom open, that she might listen to, and if possible watch the whole performance, with the same attention as was experienced by the spectators. By this means she possessed herself of all the illusion of the scene; and when she herself entered on the stage, her dreaming thoughts then brightened into a vision, where the perceptions of the soul were as firm and clear as if she were really the Constance or the Katherine whom she only represented.*

Aware of this peculiar faculty, so prevalent in the more vivid exercise of genius, Lord KAIMES seems to have been the first who, in a work on criticism, attempted to name

*The late Mrs. SIDDONS. She herself communicated this strik ing circumstance to me.

the ideal presence, to distinguish it from the real presence of things. It has been called the representative faculty, the imaginative state, and many other states and faculties. Call it what we will, no term opens to us the invisible mode of its operations, no metaphysical definition expresses its variable nature. Conscious of the existence of such a faculty, our critic perceived that the conception of it is by no means clear when described in words.

Has not the difference between an actual thing, and its image in a glass perplexed some philosophers? and it is well known how far the ideal philosophy has been carried by so fine a genius as Bishop BERKELEY. "All are pictures, alike painted on the retina, or optical sensorium!" exclaimed the enthusiast BARRY, who only saw pictures in nature, and nature in pictures. This faculty has had a strange influence over the passionate lovers of statues. We find unquestionable evidence of the vividness of the representative faculty, or the ideal presence, vying with that of reality. EVELYN has described one of this cast of mind, in the librarian of the Vatican, who haunted one of the finest collections at Rome. To these statues he would frequently talk as if they were living persons, often kissing and embracing them. A similar circumstance might be recorded of a man of distinguisded talent and literature among ourselves. Wondrous stories are told of the amatorial passion for marble statues; but the wonder ceases, and the truth is established, when the irresistible ideal presence is comprehended; the visions which now bless these lovers of statues, in the modern land of sculpture, Italy, had acted with equal force in ancient Greece. "The Last Judgment," the stupendous ideal presence of MICHAEL ANGELO, seems to have communicated itself to some of his beholders: "As I stood before this picture," a late traveller tells my blood chilled as if the reality were before me, and the very sound of the trumpet seemed to pierce my ears."

us,

Cold and barren tempers without imagination, whose impressions of objects never rise beyond those of memory and reflection, which know only to compare, and not to excite, will smile at this equivocal state of the ideal presence; yet it is a real one to the enthusiast of genius, and it is his happiest and peculiar condition. Destitute of this faculty, no metaphysical aid, no art to be taught him, no mastery of talent, will avail him; unblest with it, the votary will find each sacrifice lying cold on the altar, for no accepting flame from heaven shall kindle it.

This enthusiasm indeed can only be discovered by men of genius themselves; yet when most under its influence, they can least perceive it, as the eye which sees all things cannot view itself; or rather such an attempt would be like searching for the principle of life, which were it found would cease to be life. From an enchanted man we must not expect a narrative of his enchantment; for if he could speak to us reasonably, and like one of ourselves, in that case he would be a man in a state of disenchantment, and then would perhaps yield us no better account than we may trace by our own observations.

There is however something of reality in this state of the ideal presence; for the most familiar instances will show how the nerves of each external sense are put in motion by the idea of the object, as if the real object had been presented to it. The difference is only in the degree. The senses are more concerned in the ideal world than at first appears. The idea of a thing will make us shudder; and the bare imagination of it will often produce a real pain. A curious consequence may be deduced from this principle; MILTON, lingering amid the freshness of nature in Eden, felt all the delights of those elements which he was creating; his nerves moved with the images which excited them. The fierce and wild DANTE, amidst the abyss of his Inferno, must often have been startled by its horrors, and often left his bitter and gloomy spirit in the stings he in

flicted on the great criminal. The moveable nerves then of the man of genius are a reality; he sees, he hears, he feels by each. How mysterious to us is the operation of this faculty!

A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,* like nature, open a volume large as life itself-embracing a circuit of human existence! This state of mind has even a reality in it for the generality of persons. In a romance or a drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator, who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and existing scene.

Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence? When FIELDING said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been written with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the observation by facts which never reached him. METASTASIO, in writing the ninth scene of the second act of his " Olympiad," found himself suddenly moved-shedding tears. The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears; and they afterwards proved contagious. Had our poet not perpetuated his surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circumstance had passed away with the emotion, as many such have. POPE could never read Priam's speech for the loss of his son, without tears, and frequently has been observed to weep over tender and melancholy passages. ALFIERI, the most energetic poet of modern times, having composed, without a pause, the whole

* Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often and as long as he wills-with such a personal unity, that an ingenious lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richard.

son.