It has been observed that the act of suicide may often originate in a feeling analogous to the enthusiasm exhibited by men of great genius and sensibility. This mental idiosyncrasy, which borders so closely on the confines of insanity, has been compared to the narrow bridge of Al Sirat, which leads the followers of Mahomet from earth to heaven, but by so narrow a path that the passenger is in momentary danger of falling into the dismal gulf which yawns beneath him. This abnormal condition of the nervous system is, to a certain extent, dependent on natural organic structure, aided materially by an unhealthy exercise of the imaginative faculty. Fielding spoke but the history of his own sensations when he declared that he “had no doubt but the most pathetic scenes had been writ with tears.” Metastasio was found weeping over his Olympiad. He says: “When I apply with attention, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent tumult; I grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work.” Pope could not proceed with certain passages of his translation of Homer without shedding tears. Alfieri declares that he frequently penned the most tender passages in his plays “under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and whilst shedding tears.” Dryden was seized with violent tremors during the composition of his celebrated ode. Rousseau, in conceiving the first idea of his Essay on the Arts, became almost delirious with enthusiasm.
Madame Roland has thus powerfully described the ideal presence in her first readings of Telemachus and Tasso:—“My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire colouring my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. I was Eucharis for Telemachus, and Emenia for Tancred. Having my reason during this perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything for any one: the whole had no connexion with myself. I sought for nothing around me; I was they; I saw only the objects which existed for them; it was a dream without being awakened.”
Raffaelle says, alluding to his celebrated picture, the Transfiguration—“When I have stood looking at that picture, from figure to figure, the eagerness, the spirit, the close unaffected attention of each figure to the principal action, my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot myself, and for that time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman; for I could really fancy the whole action was passing before my eyes.”