The Infirmities of Genius Illustrated by Referring the Anomalies in the Literary Character to the Habits and Constitutional Peculiarities of Men of Genius, Volume 2Saunders and Otley, 1833 - Genius |
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abstemiousness acquaintance advantage alluded amiable apoplexy appears attack attention became biographer bleeding blood bodily body brain Bruno BYRON CONTINUED cause CHAPTER character choly circumstances constitution convulsions COWPER CONTINUED Cowper's malady death debility dejection delight delirium delirium tremens diet disease disorder dyspepsia effects endeavoured epilepsy errors excessive excitement exegi exercise exhaustion faculties feelings fever friends gloom Goethe habits Hayley heart Hippocrates House of Lords hypochondria imagination infirmities of genius injudicious insanity irritability Johnson labour Lady Austin Lady Blessington Lady Hesketh laudanum letters literary living Lord Byron madness mania melan melancholy ment mental mind misery mode monomania Moore morbid sensibility nature nervous ness never Newton observation occasion Olney opinion paroxysm passion period person Petrarch physician plethoric Plutarch poet poor Cowper port wine reason regimen says Parry scorbutic SIR WALTER SCOTT Southampton speaking spirits sufferings symptoms temperament thing tion told Unwin
Popular passages
Page 100 - Yet must I think less wildly : I have thought Too long and darkly, till my brain became, In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame : And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, My springs of life were poison'd.
Page 130 - Not understand me ?" exclaimed Lord Byron, with a look of the utmost distress, " what a pity! — then it is too late, all is over.
Page 163 - I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman ; but she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation.
Page 50 - May, or beginning of June, because before that time my greenhouse will not be ready to receive us, and it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in. I line it with mats, and spread the floor with mats ; and there you shall sit with a bed of mignonette at your side, and a hedge of honeysuckles, roses, and jasmine ; and I will make you a bouquet of myrtle every day.
Page 48 - ... me. My friends, I know, expect that I shall see yet again. They think it necessary to the existence of divine truth, that he who once had possession of it should never finally lose it. I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every case but my own. And why not in my own? For causes which to them it appears madness to allege, but which rest upon my mind with a weight of immovable conviction.
Page 65 - ... describe them to one who, if he even saw them, could receive no delight from them — who has a faint recollection, and so faint as to be like an almost forgotten dream, that once he was susceptible of pleasure from such causes. The country that you have had in prospect has been always famed for its beauties ; but the wretch who can derive no gratification from a view of nature, even under the disadvantage of her most ordinary dress, will have no eyes to admire her in any. In one day, in one...
Page 46 - My device was intended to represent not my own heart, but the heart of a Christian, mourning and yet rejoicing, pierced with thorns, yet wreathed about with roses. I have the thorn without the rose. My brier is a wintry one, the flowers are withered, but the thorn remains.
Page 32 - If they be sincere, they are themselves under the strongest delusion ; and it will be well, if it prove not, on their part, a wilful one — it will be well, if they have not reached that last perversity of human reason, to believe a falsehood of their own invention.
Page 56 - They often see us get into Lady Hesketh's carriage, and rather uncharitably suppose that it always carries us into a scene of dissipation, which in fact it never does.
Page 47 - The hedge that has been apparently dead, is not so, it wiU burst into leaf and blossom at the appointed time; but no such time is appointed for the stake that stands in it. It is as dead as it seems, and will prove itself no dissembler.