Men of genius are often unfortunately addicted to drinking. Nature, as she has gifted them with greater powers than their fellows, seems also to have mingled with their cup of life more bitterness. There is a melancholy which is apt to come like a cloud over the imaginations of such characters. Their minds possess a susceptibility and a delicacy of structure which unfit them for the gross atmosphere of human nature; wherefore, high talent has ever been distinguished for sadness and gloom. Genius lives in a world of its own: it is the essence of a superior nature—the loftier imaginings of the mind, clothed with a more spiritual and refined verdure. Few men endowed with such faculties enjoy the ordinary happiness of humanity. The stream of their lives runs harsh and broken. Melancholy thoughts sweep perpetually across their souls; and if these be heightened by misfortune, they are plunged into the deepest misery. To relieve these feelings, many plans have been adopted. Dr. Johnson fled for years to wine under his habitual gloom. He found that the pangs were removed while its immediate influence lasted, but he also found that they returned with double force when that influence passed away. He saw the dangerous precipice on which he stood, and, by an unusual effort of volition, gave it over. In its stead he substituted tea; and to this milder stimulus had recourse in his melancholy. Voltaire and Fontenelle, for the same purpose, used coffee. The excitements of Newton and Hobbes were the fumes of tobacco, while Demosthenes and Haller were sufficiently stimulated by drinking freely of cold water. Such are the differences of constitution. “As good be melancholy still, as drunken beasts and beggars.” So says old Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, and there are few who will not subscribe to his creed. The same author quaintly, but justly, remarks, “If a drunken man gets a child, it will never, likely, have a good brain.” Dr. Darwin, a great authority on all subjects connected with life, says, that he never knew a glutton affected with the gout, who was not at the same time addicted to liquor. He also observes, “it is remarkable that all the diseases from drinking spirituous or fermented liquors are liable to become hereditary, even to the third generation, gradually increasing, if the cause be continued, till the family becomes extinct.”[8] We need not endeavour to trace further the remote causes of drunkenness. A drunkard is rarely able to recall the particular circumstances which made him so. The vice creeps upon him insensibly, and he is involved in its fetters before he is aware. It is enough that we know the proximate cause, and also the certain consequences. One thing is certain, that a man who addicts himself to intemperance, can never be said to be sound in mind or body. The former is a state of partial insanity, while the effects of the liquor remain; and the latter is always more or less diseased in its actions. CHAPTER III.