of enlivening carnation; his hair sooty black, stiff, and bushy. Or
perhaps he might be represented as of a pale sickly yellow, with
wiry red hair.
His burning eyen, whom bloody streaks did stain,
Stared full wide, and threw forth sparks of fire,
And more for rank dispight than for great pain
Shakt his long locks, colour’d like copper wire,
And bit his tawny beard to show his raging ire.
I do not mean here to trace the progress of the diseases of the
mind, but merely to throw out some hints respecting the character
of the outrageous maniac.
You see him lying in his cell regardless of every thing, with a
death-like fixed gloom upon his countenance. When I say it is a
death-like gloom, I mean a heaviness of the features without knitting
of the brows or action of the muscles.
If you watch him in his paroxysm you may see the blood
working to his head; his face acquires a darker red; he becomes
restless; then rising from his couch he paces his cell and tugs his
chains. Now his inflamed eye is fixed upon you, and his features
lighten up into an inexpressible wildness and ferocity.
The error into which a painter would naturally fall, is to represent
this expression by the swelling features of passion and the
frowning eyebrow; but this would only convey the idea of passion,
not of madness. Or he mistakes melancholia for madness. The
theory upon which we are to proceed in attempting to convey this
peculiar expression of ferocity amidst the utter wreck of the intellect,
I conceive to be this, that the expression of mental energy
should be avoided, and consequently all exertion of those muscles
which are peculiarly indicative of sentiment. I conceiye this to be
consistent with nature, because I have observed (contrary to my
expectation) that there was not that energy, that knitting of the
brows, that indignant brooding and thoughtfulness in the face
of madmen which is generally imagined to characterise their expression,
and which we almost uniformly find given to them in
painting. There is a vacancy in their laugh, and a want of meaning
in their ferociousness.
To learn the character of the human countenance when devoid
of expression, and reduced to the state of brutality, we must have
recourse to the lower animals; and as I have already hinted, study
their expression, their timidity, their watchfulness, their state of
excitement, and their ferociousness. If we should transfer their
expression to the human countenance, we should, as I conceive it,
irresistibly convey the idea of madness, vacancy of mind, and mere
animal passion.
But these discussions are only for the studies of the painter.
The subject should be full in his mind, without its being for
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