One might think that the poet would take pains to differentiate this inspired madness from the diseased mind of the ordinary lunatic. But as a matter of fact, bards who were literally insane have attracted much attention from their brothers. [Footnote: At the beginning of the romantic period not only Blake and Cowper, but Christopher Smart, John Clare, Thomas Dermody, John Tannahill and Thomas Lovell Beddoes made the mad poet familiar.] Of these, Tasso [Footnote: See _Song for Tasso_, Shelley; _Tasso to Leonora_, James Thomson, B. V., _Tasso to Leonora_, E. F. Hoffman.] and Cowper [Footnote: See Bowles, _The Harp and Despair of Cowper_; Mrs. Browning, _Cowper's Grave_; Lord Houghton, _On Cowper's Cottage at Olney_.] have appeared most often in the verse of the last century. Cowper's inclusion among his poems of verses written during periods of actual insanity has seemed to indicate that poetic madness is not merely a figure of speech. There is also significance, as revealing the poet's attitude toward insanity, in the fact that several fictional poets are represented as insane. Crabbe and Shelley have ascribed madness to their poet-heroes, [Footnote: See Crabbe, _The Patron_; Shelley, _Rosalind and Helen_.] while the American, J. G. Holland, represents his hero's genius as a consequence, in part, at least, of a hereditary strain of suicidal insanity. [Footnote: See J. G. Holland, _Kathrina_. For recent verse on the mad poet see William Rose Benet, _Mad Blake_; Amy Lowell, _Clear, With Light Variable Winds_; Cale Young Rice, _The Mad Philosopher_; Edmund Blunden, _Clare's Ghost_.] It goes without saying that this is a romantic conception, wholly incompatible with the eighteenth century belief that poetry is produced by the action of the intelligence, aided by good taste. Think of the mad poet, William Blake, assuring his sedate contemporaries, All pictures that's painted with sense and with thought Are painted by madmen as sure as a groat. [Footnote: See fragment CI.] What chance did he have of recognition? This is merely indicative of the endless quarrel between the inspired poet and the man of reason. The eighteenth century contempt for poetic madness finds typical expression in Pope's satirical lines, Some demon stole my pen (forgive the offense) And once betrayed me into common sense. [Footnote: _Dunciad_.] And it is answered by Burns' characterization of writers depending upon dry reason alone: A set o' dull, conceited hashes Confuse their brains in college classes! They gang in sticks and come out asses, Plain truth to speak, And syne they think to climb Parnassus By dint of Greek.[Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik_.]