est tout-à-fait clair aujourd’hui_.” We knew a gentleman whose temper was not controllable if he allowed himself to pass a day without his accustomed evacuation from the bowels. Pinel records the particulars of the case of a man who had fits of mental derangement whenever the action of the bowels became irregular. The blood-thirsty miscreant Robespierre is said to have been of a “_costive habit, and to have been much subjected to derangement of the liver_.” After death, it is said that “his bowels were found one adherent mass.” It is indeed interesting to consider, both morally and medically, how far these morbid ailments influenced this monster in the bloody career in which he was engaged. There can be no question but that the morbid irritability which many of our men of genius have manifested was but the effect of a derangement of the physical frame acting upon a mind naturally sensitive to such impressions. Much of the petulance, personality, and malignity of Pope was dependent upon causes over which he had no control—viz., disease of the stomach and liver, producing hypochondriasis. It has been well observed by Madden, “Who knows under what paroxysms of mental irritation caused by that disease (indigestion), which more than any other domineers over the feelings of the sufferer, he might have written those bitter sarcasms which he levelled against his literary opponents? Who knows in what moment of bodily pain his irascibility might have taken the form of unjustifiable satire, or his morbid sensibility assumed the sickly shape of petulance and peevishness? Who knows how the strength of the strong mind might have been cast down by his sufferings, when ‘he descended to the artifice’ of imposing on a bookseller, and of ‘writing those letters for effect which he published by subterfuge?’ Who that has observed how the vacillating conduct of the dyspeptic invalid imitates the vagaries of this proteiform malady can wonder at his capriciousness, or be surprised at the anomaly of bitterness on the tongue, and benevolence in the heart, of the same individual?”[56] That Pope was a severe sufferer from bodily disease will appear evident from the following account given by Dr. Johnson of the poet. He says, “Pope’s constitution, which was originally feeble, became so debilitated that he stood in perpetual need of female attendance; and so great was his sensibility of cold that he wore a fur doublet under a shirt of very coarse warm linen. When he rose, he invested himself in a bodice made of stiff canvass, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till it was laced; and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. His legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were drawn off and on by the maid, for he was not able to dress or undress himself, and he neither went to bed nor rose without help.”