Note 528 — MEDICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF INSANITY.

Dr. Haslam ventures an opinion upon this subject, which appears to us so plausible that we shall introduce it to the notice of our readers. “The ordinary class of persons, who are usually summoned to act as jurymen, have in common with the mass of mankind, who have wanted the means of direct information, adopted the popular and floating opinions on the subject of insanity. That dramatic representations have forcibly operated for this purpose there is little reason to doubt: and some of the plays of Shakspeare exhibit many of the forms which this malady is supposed to assume. Among such characters none have more strongly fastened on the general mind than the outrageous Lear, and the distracted Ophelia; the subtile crasiness of Hamlet leaves it doubtful whether his alienation of mind be real or conventionally assumed, and to the ordinary observer conveys more of fiction than the avowed counterfeit of Edgar. Romances, the literary food of the idle and thoughtless, abound in descriptions of intellectual calamity; but these artificers of fancy, like many unskilful performers, are too prone to strain the loftier impressions of feeling, and distort the energies of passion into mental derangement. Something of affecting interest may be excited by the weaknesses and wanderings of Maria, but Cervantes has exhibited the happiest and most correct picture of systematic insanity; although the vehicle of chivalry in which it is conveyed, has, to our own countrymen, blunted its interest as a physiological portrait of madness; his sallies have provoked mirth, and so keen is the relish for the ridiculous, that in the luxury of laughter, the reader has forgotten the tribute of commiseration.”