is coarse railleries
relating to what he calls "the personal defects of poets." In vol. i. p.
33, he says, "In the Scaligerana we have Joseph Scaliger's opinion
concerning poets. 'There never was a man who was a poet, or addicted to
the study of poetry, but his heart was puffed up with his
greatness.'--This is very true. The poetical enthusiasm persuades those
gentlemen that they have something in them superior to others, because
they employ a language peculiar to themselves. When the poetic furor
seizes them, its traces frequently remain on their faces, which make
connoisseurs say with Horace,

Aut insanit homo, ant versus facit.

There goes a madman or a bard!

"Their thoughtful air and melancholy gait make them appear insane; for,
accustomed to versify while they walk, and to bite their nails in
apparent agonies, their steps are measured and slow, and they look as if
they were reflecting on something of consequence, although they are only
thinking, as the phrase runs, of nothing!" I have only transcribed the
above description of our jocular scholar, with an intention of
describing those exterior marks of that fine enthusiasm, of which the
poet is peculiarly susceptible, and which have exposed many an elevated
genius to the ridicule of the vulgar.

I find this admirably defended by Charpentier: "Men may ridicule as much
as they please those gesticulations and contortions which poets are apt
to make in the act of composing; it is certain, however, that they
greatly assist in putting the imagination into motion. These kinds of
agitation do not always show a mind which labours with its sterility;
they frequently proceed from a mind which excites and animates itself.
Quintilian has nobly compared them to those lashings of his tail which a
lion gives himself when he is preparing to combat. Persius, when he
would give us an idea of a cold and languishing oration, says that its
author did not strike his desk nor bite his nails."

Nec pluteum caedit, nec demorsos sapit ungues.

These exterior marks of enthusiasm may be illustrated by the following
curious anecdote:--Domenichino, the painter, was accustomed to act the
characters of all the figures he would represent on his canvas, and to
speak aloud whatever the passion he meant to describe could prompt.
Painting the martyrdom of St. Andrew, Carracci one day caught him in a
violent passion, speaking in a terrible and menacing tone. He was at
that moment empl