This brief list needs scarcely be supplemented by other names of poets of melancholy, such as Reinhold Lenz, Heinrich von Kleist, Robert Southey, Byron, Leopardi, in order to command our attention by reason of the tragic fate which ended the lives of nearly all of these men, the most frequent and the most terrible being that of insanity.  It is of course a matter of common knowledge that chronic melancholy or the persistent brooding over personal misfortune is an almost inevitable preliminary to mental derangement.  And when this melancholy takes root in the finely organized mind of genius, it is only to be expected that the result will be even more disastrous than in the case of the ordinary mind.  Lombroso holds the opinion that if men of genius are not all more or less insane, that is, if the “spheres of influence” of genius and insanity do not actually overlap, they are at least contiguous at many points, so that the transition from the former to the latter is extremely easy and even natural.  But genius in itself is not an abnormal mental condition.  It does not even consist of an extraordinary memory, vivid imagination, quickness of judgment, or of a combination of all of these.  Kant defines genius as the talent of invention.  Originality and productiveness are the fundamental elements of genius.  And it is an almost instinctive force which urges the author on in his creative work.  In the main his activity is due less to free will than to this inner compulsion.

    “Ich halte diesen Drang vergebens auf,
    Der Tag und Nacht in meinem Busen wechselt. 
    Wenn ich nicht sinnen oder dichten soll,
    So ist das Leben mir kein Leben mehr,”

says Goethe’s Tasso.[5] If this impulse of genius is embodied in a strong physical organism, as for example in the case of Shakespeare and Goethe, there need be no detriment to physical health; otherwise, and especially if there is an inherited tendency to disease, there is almost sure to be a physical collapse.  Specialists in the subject have pointed out that violent passions are even more potent in producing mental disease than mere intellectual over-exertion.  And these are certainly characteristic in a very high degree of the mind of genius.  It has often been remarked that it is the corona spinosa of genius to feel all pain more intensely than do other men.  Schopenhauer says “der, in welchem der Genius lebt, leidet am meisten.”  It is only going a step further then, when Hamerling writes to his friend Moeser:  “Schliesslich ist es doch nur der Kranke, der sich das Leid der ganzen Welt zu Herzen nimmt.”