TILE TRAGEDY OF LIFE.*
THERE were many reasons, according to Fuseli, why: the English should be bad judges of Italian poetry, but the weightiest of all was "de d—d ignorance of de language.' Writers and readers of fiction very generally labour under a similar disadvantage with respect to most topics that are connected with the pathology of mind or body. Hardly do they know the mere A B C of the matter. "In England," says Miss Nightingale, speaking of some errors in novels, "sickness and death have met with the least faithful observa- tion. The materials of course are there, but the careful study is al- * The Tragedy of Life: being Records of Remarkable Phases of Lunacy, kept by
Plrysician. By John H. Brenton. in two volumes. Published by Smith, Elder, nut Co.
together wanting. The 'death-bed' of almost every one of our novels is as mere a piece of stage effect as is the singing-death of a prima- donna in an opera." She notices that the joys- of convalescence, that is to say, of a slow and anything but joyful struggle, are a favourite topic with novelists; so also are the loves of cousins, whereof comes physical and mental degeneracy. "In novels, lives are saved by strong jelly !' "(what does strong jelly mean?) "and by other things equally absurd. The heroine always braves 'contagion,' and then dies of it with her whole family or charge. More shame for her if they do !" Here are five of the most common blunders out of mul- titudes occurring in novels, and as such works now form so large a proportion of the reading of women of all classes, and of men of some classes, lifiss Nightingale may well complain that their authors "do mach to spread and stereotype popular errors and ignoranees," and to "encourage serious and even fatal mistakes." In the interest of their art itself, apart from other considerations, we have a right to demand of novelists that they shall take the trouble to observe be- fore they pretend to describe ; that they shall not discourse about colours, if they labour under colour blindness, and can see no differ- ence in hue between the fruit of a cherry-tree and its leaves; that if they have never visited a menagerie, not to say travelled in Africa, Ceylon, or India, they shall abstain from the attempt to construct an elephant out of the depths of their inward consciousness ; and that if the true nature of insanity be as little known to them as it is to most lawyers, judges, and enlightened British jurymen, they shall have the decency to refrain from scribbling mischievous nousense upon so awful a theme, and leave it to be treated in fiction by men who, like Mr. Brenten, have made it the subject of their conscientious study. The pleasure we have derived from the perusal of Mr. Brenten's narratives is greatly enhanced by the hope they inspire, that they will be the means of popularizing sounder views than now prevail on the subject of mental. disorders. We assume, of course, that the narra- tives themselves will be popular, and we think we may do so with much confidence; for, regarded simply as stories, they are very skilfully composed and highly effective. Critics will acknowledge their literary merit, and they will awaken an unwonted interest in the minds of the most blasé novel readers; it will be such a godsend for them to get hold of a book so delightfully agitating, so full of fascinating horrors, and so remarkably unlike the common ran of the circulating library. There are seven tales in the collection, illus- trating nearly as many different forms of insanity. The longest and best of the seven occupies the whole of the first volume, and is, in. fact, a complete novel on a small scale, having a symmetrical plot, which is worked out in striking incidents and situations of no for- tuitous kind, nor appearing to owe their existence to the arbitrary contrivance of the author, but rather to have their shape determined naturally and necessarily by the characters and mutual relations of the several persons in the tale, sane and insane. Its central subject involves, as the title Mad or not Mad? implies, a question of disputed insanity, and is peculiarly interesting, as illus- trating a principle of the highest practical importance, but newly recognized by psychologists, and not yet understood by the public, or accepted by our courts of law. The principle is, that there may be decided insanity where there is no well-marked disorder of the intellectual faculties. Until recently "it was believed, even by phy- sicians, that insanity is an affection of the intellectual, and not of the emotional part of man's nature;" but this doctrine is exactly the reverse of the truth. In the periods during which the disease is developing, the emotions are always perverted, while the reason re- mains intact; and this fact was fully known to Shakspeare, as Dr. Baelmill has demonstrated in his admirable commentary on the cases of disordered mind, which the poet has portrayed with such mighty power. "Disorders of the intellectual faculties," says Dr. Bucknill, are secondary; they are often, indeed, to be recognized. as the morbid emotions transformed into perverted action of the reason; but in no cases are they primary and essential. How completely is this theory supported by the development of insanity, as it is por- trayed in Lear ! Shakspeare, who painted from vast observation of nature, as he saw it without and felt it within, places this great fact broadly and unmistakably before us. It has, indeed, been long ignored by the exponents of medical and legal science, at the cost of ever futile attempts to define insanity by its accidents and not by its essence; and following this guidance, the literary critics of Sbx k- speare have completely overlooked the early symptoms of Lear's insanity; and, according to the custom of the world, have postponed its recognition until he is running about a frantic, raving madman." The same mistake is daily committed in real life.
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