The excellent Mr. Addison, whose opinion in a matter of this sort, is of the greatest weight, speaking of the genius of Lee, thus proceeds[1].  “Among our modern English poets, there is none who was better turned for tragedy than our author; if instead of favouring the impetuosity of his genius, he had restrained it, and kept it within proper bounds.  His thoughts are wonderfully suited for tragedy; but frequently lost in such a cloud of words, that it is hard to see the beauty of them.  There is an infinite fire in his works, but so involved in smoke, that it does not appear in half its lustre.  He frequently succeeds in the passionate part of the tragedy; but more particularly where he slackens his efforts, and eases the stile of those epithets and metaphors in which he so much abounds.”

It is certain that our author for some time was deprived of his senses, and was confined in Bedlam; and as Langbaine observes, it is to be regretted, that his madness exceeded that divine fury which Ovid mentions, and which usually accompany the best poets.

Est Deus in nobus agitante calescimus illo.

His condition in Bedlam was far worse; in a Satire on the Poets it is thus described,

There in a den remov’d from human eyes,
Possest with muse, the brain-sick poet lies,
Too miserably wretched to be nam’d;
For plays, for heroes, and for passion fam’d: 
Thoughtless he raves his sleepless hours away
In chains all night, in darkness all the day. 
And if he gets some intervals from pain,           }
The fit returns; he foams and bites his chain,     }
His eye-balls roll, and he grows mad again.        }

The reader may please to observe, the two last lines are taken from Lee himself in his description of madness in Caesar Borgia, which is inimitable.  Dryden has observed, that there is a pleasure in being mad, which madmen only know, and indeed Lee has described the condition in such lively terms, that a man can almost imagine himself in the situation,

To my charm’d ears no more of woman tell,
Name not a woman, and I shall be well: 
Like a poor lunatic that makes his moan,
And for a while beguiles his lookers on;
He reasons well.—­His eyes their wildness lose
He vows the keepers his wrong’d sense abuse. 
But if you hit the cause that hurt his brain,            }
Then his teeth gnash, he foams, he shakes his chain,     }
His eye-balls roll, and he is mad again.                 }

If we may credit the earl of Rochester, Mr. Lee was addicted to drinking; for in a satire of his, in imitation of Sir John Suckling’s Session of the Poets, which, like the original, is destitute of wit, poetry, and good manners, he charges him with it.

The lines, miserable as they are, we shall insert;

  Nat.  Lee stept in next, in hopes of a prize;
  Apollo remembring he had hit once in thrice: 
  By the rubies in’s face, he could not deny,
  But he had as much wit as wine could supply;
  Confess’d that indeed he had a musical note,
  But sometimes strain’d so hard that it rattled in the throat;
  Yet own’d he had sense, and t’ encourage him for’t
  He made him his Ovid in Augustus’s court.