Never were the afflictions of Insanity more vividly portrayed than in
the following lines from _Churchill's Epistle to Hogarth_:--


Sure 'tis a curse which angry fates impose,
To mortify man's arrogance, that those
Who're fashioned of some better sort of clay,
Must sooner than the common herd decay.
What bitter pangs must humble genius feel,
In their last hour to view a Swift and Steele!
How must ill-boding horrors fill their breast,
When she beholds men, mark'd above the rest
For qualities most dear, plung'd from that height,
And sunk, deep sunk, in second childhood's night!
Are men indeed such things? and are the best
More subject to this evil than the rest,
To drivel out whole years of idiot breath,
And sit the monuments of living death?
O galling circumstance to human pride!
Abasing thought! but not to be deny'd.
With curious art, the brain too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.
Constant attention wears the active mind,
Blots out her pow'rs and leaves a blank behind.

* * * * *


MACADAMIZATION.