There is nothing original in the fact that a man describes his own madness in prose or verse. Such descriptions may even be regarded as a distinct genre of literary activity, perverse and detestable to those who, like Mr. Balfour, want only the "cheerful" note in literature, but of infinite interest to those who place a truthful account of the human soul above one which is pleasing. Nathaniel Lee's poems, Lenan's _Traumgewalten_, Hoffmann's _Kreisler_ possess a psychological interest which no clamour for literary cradle-songs can remove. Strindberg's self-revelations have a touch of that exultation which, through a dominant curiosity, survives the most complete cheerlessness, horror, and pain--that joy of which Charles Lamb wrote to Coleridge: "Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad," and which made him look back upon his lunacy "with a gloomy kind of envy." [Illustration: August Strindberg--1906] [Illustration: August Strindberg--1907. Photo's: A. Malmström, Stockholm.] Comparisons between Rousseau's _Confessions, Dialogues_, and _Rêveries_, and Strindberg's _Inferno_ readily suggest themselves. Both writers reveal, by their minute analysis of sick thoughts, the consciousness of a lunacy which is a necessary experience on the road to spiritual health, and, therefore, shameless. There is much similarity in the stories of persistent attacks by invisible enemies, of plots, and persecutions, in the egocentric deductions from natural phenomena and the events of the world. But there is also a great difference. Rousseau manages to keep a watchful eye on the preservation of friendly relations with the world throughout his aberrations, whilst Strindberg recklessly defies its judgment.