BA. Elatio

facetosa. Crack

Descrip

of Ophelia which consists of a string of quotations or allusions to picturesque customs:

"You must sing Down a-down an you call him adown-a. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master's daughter."

We have not space for the explanation, but it may be found in the commentators, or in the interesting and elaborate history of " Shakspeare's Times", by my early and valued friend Dr. Drake.

The SECOND VARIETY of the present species, that of CRACK-BRAINED WIT, is derived rather from the peculiar brained wit. temperament of the individual, than from any particular habit or train of reading; for in general, few persons have given themselves less time to read, study, or even think, than those who are possest by it. It is characterized by high spirits, a sportive and rampant imagination, and a flow of facetious ebullient wit incapable of restraining itself. It is hence often poured forth on most improper occasions, and hesitates not to sacrifice a friend at the shrine of a jest.

tion.

There are some persons who possess by nature so perpetual a tide of excitement that their high spirits seem seldom or never to ebb, and so irresistible a propensity to this kind of verbal merriment that no change of circumstances can deprive them of it. Sir Thomas More, who perhaps overflowed with this disposition in a very high degree, is well known to have been facetious on his own scaffold.

It is not always however, nor, as we have just observed, even for the most part, that the man of ready wit is, like Sir Thomas More, a man of ready judgement, or sound learning. The apprehension necessary to constitute the one is widely different from that necessary to constitute the other, as we had occasion to remark under a former genus and hence vivacious sallies, taunts, and repartees not only may co-exist with a deranged condition of mind, but are frequently a result of it. And on this account the court jester of former times, whose office succeeded to that of minstrel, was commonly denominated the king's

GEN. III. SPEC. I. BA. Elatio

fool, as uttering from the unbridled liberty of speech that was allowed him, humorous flashes of rebuke which no man in his sober senses would have ventured upon; and facetosa. which seemed, to adopt the language of Jaques, who was himself not unjustly accused of wearing the same livery,

to show that

in his brain

Which is as dry as the remainder bisket

After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd
With observation, the which he vents

In mangled forms.

brained wit. On this ac

Crack

count the

court wit or jester denominated fool.

A. Elatio False inspi

ecstatica.

The THIRD VARIETY, OF ECSTATIC ILLUSION, is also a pleasurable hallucination: and consists in a sense of false inspiration, or a visionary boast of some preternatural ration. Descripendowment, in the course of which the judgement is so far tion. perverted as to mistake the energetic notions of the imagination for realities; so that the victim of the delusion believes in apparitions, affects an intercourse with the world of spirits, or lays claim to a power of working miracles. This morbid afflatus has often been aped by cunning Has often been aped impostors to serve their own interests with the multitude: by cunning and there is no great difficulty in conceiving that it is in impostors." many cases a real and serious hallucination, when we reflect on the ease with which such impostors themselves are capable of deluding the populace and working them up into false ecstasies, and especially of inveigling them into a hearty belief of their own miraculous powers. passions of men are once set afloat, and the sented to them is full of the marvellous and the terrible, they are too apt to confound the false with the real, and are prepared to proceed to whatever extremities the magician may choose to lead them. We are told by Lucian that Illustrated. when Archelaus, a celebrated Greek actor, performed the part of Andromeda in the tragedy of Euripides, several of the spectators were seized with a delirium; some at the time of performance, others a day or two afterwards; during which they did nothing but declaim in a theatrical manner, and piteously lament the fate of the persecuted

When the

How pro

duced in

subject pre

other per

sons.

66

princess. Burton, therefore, has some reason for remarking that what the impostors before us, or the brain-sick enthusiasts whom they imitate, once broach and set on foot, be it never so absurd, false, and prodigious, the common people will follow and believe. It will run like murrain in cattle, scab in sheep. Nulla scabies superstitione scabior; as he that is bitten by a mad dog bites others, and all in the end become mad. Either out of affection of novelty, simplicity, blind zeal, hope, and fear, the giddy headed multitude will embrace it, and without farther examination approve it "*.

The genuine enthusiast is always possest of a warm imagination, and generally of a nervous temperament, and delicate frame; and a long series of elevated abstraction on religious subjects, combined with protracted fasting, has ordinarily been the harbinger of the fancied affiatus. Such was the discipline by which the lovely, and blooming, and sincerely devout Saint Teresa was prepared for ecstasies and visions, and led to impose upon herself and all that beheld her; and seriously to believe, in the fervour of her mind, that her body was lifted from the earth: and that she heard the voice of God, saw our Lord with St. Peter and St. Paul standing on her left hand; by the first of whom the cross, which was at the end of her beads, was miraculously transformed into four large gems, incomparably more precious than diamonds; with many other marvellous revelations which we cannot find room to detail. Though it should be noticed that devils appeared to her as well as blessed spirits, whom she always kept at a distance by sprinkling holy water; and that she was an eye-witness to the joyful escape from the flame of purgatory of the purified souls of father Peter of Alcantara, father Ivagnez, and a Carmelite friar †.

It is not necessary to produce other examples, though many might be brought from our own times. A cure is extremely difficult to be obtained; and I am afraid that

Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III. Sect. iv. 1. 3.

Butler's Lives of the Saints, in loce.

even Mr. Locke's admirable chapter on Enthusiasm would be read to no purpose. In one instance the enthusiast seems to have been brought home to himself by a pleasant and ingenious stratagem of his superintendant at Venice. This visionary had conceited himself to be Elias, and like the prophet, had determined upon fasting forty days. The keeper fearful that he would never hold out, and that he should lose his patient, dressed up a man in the attire of an angel, who was introduced to him in no ordinary manner, and informed him that he was commissioned from Heaven to bring him food. The supposititious Elias took it, was afterwards allowed to find out the trick, and thus, at the same time, found out his own imposition upon himself.

From the influence which we have seen such enthu- A. Elatio siasts, or even pretended enthusiasts, capable of produc- Fanaticism. fanatica. ing upon the mind of the multitude when roused by the solemnity and awfulness of the revelations that are supposed to be disclosed to them, we can easily see how FANATICISM, constituting the FOURTH VARIETY of the present species, may obtain an ascendancy, and even rage with all the ramifying power of an epidemic: consisting of Description, religious flights of the imagination, predominant over the natural feelings as well as the judgement, excited by the calls or doctrines of those who affect to be preternaturally gifted, or who possess an equal influence over the mind by the high sanction of priesthood, profound learning, or any other respected authority: and often urging to a voluntary and inappropriate submission to severe privations, mortifications, and tortures; or to the torture and massacre of those who profess different creeds.

Examples, as in the last variety, may be found in every age and religion, but chiefly in times of gross ignorance and barbarism; where the general mind has been too little informed to distinguish between truth and sophistry, and the passions have been undisciplined to restraint. It is hence of no importance what religion or superstition is to be inculcated, for those that are true and those that are false have been equally laid hold of by enthusiasts and

.

Chiefly a ignorant and barba

delirium of

rous times. Truth or

falsehood of the principles ap-; pealed to,

of

no im

GEN. III.

SPEC. I.

y A. Elatio

ecstatica. False inspi

ration.

portance in

producing the effect. Prophets of

Baal.

Phrygian
priests.
Indian Jug
gernaut.
Lamism.
Sufferings

of the Wal-
denses.
St. Bartho-

lomew's day.
Inquisition.
Philip II.
of Spain.

Cure to be obtained chiefly by general in

struction

and a diffu

sion of genuine knowledge.

impostors to produce the same end, and effect the same triumph by means and machinery that could only be furnished from the infernal regions. Hence the blood and raving of the prophets of Baal; the Curetes or Phrygian priests, and the delirious votaries of the Indian Juggernaut; the cruel and senseless penances and punishments sustained in many of the convents and nunneries of Lamism, and still more so in those of many catholic countries. Hence the terrible sufferings of the Waldenses, the furies of St. Bartholomew's day, the fires of Smithfield, and the dark and doleful cells, the whips, and wires, and pincers, and pullies, and all the infernal paraphernalia of the Inquisition. Hence, in ancient times, the matrons of Canaan and of Carthage were instigated to throw their own children into the flames, and sacrifice them to the gloomy deity whose anger it was held necessary to appease; and hence in more modern days, Philip II. of Spain, was goaded to impeach a son, of whom he was little worthy, before the Chamber of Inquisitors, to bespeak their condemnation of him, and to take effectual care that he should be poisoned, as soon as his sentence had been pronounced.

2

The cure of these diseases belongs rather to colleges of general instruction than of medicine. Individual cases of enthusiasm and fanaticism have existed, and will probably continue to exist, in all ages; but when the general mind is well informed, and the social feelings and virtues, are duly estimated and widely cultivated, the wild-fire will burn in vain, and meet with little or no fuel to support its rage.