In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of sickness, yet far enough from the terra firma of established health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, requesting--an article. In Articulo Mortis, thought I; but it is something hard--and the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved me. The summons, unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to link me on again to the petty businesses of life, which I had lost sight of; a gentle call to activity, however trivial; a wholesome weaning from that preposterous dream of self-absorption--the puffy state of sickness--in which I confess to have lain so long, insensible to the magazines and monarchies, of the world alike; to its laws, and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding; the acres, which in imagination I had spread over--for the sick man swells in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he becomes a Tityus to himself--are wasting to a span; and for the giant of self-importance, which I was so lately, you have me once again in my natural pretensions--the lean and meagre figure of your insignificant Essayist. SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS So far from the position holding true, that great wit (or genius, in our modern way of speaking), has a necessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend, "--did Nature to him frame, As all things but his judgment overcame, His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, Tempering that mighty sea below."