His insanity manifested
itself in tremendous projects of reform, world-conquests, and outbreaks
of wild sensuality. He was sent to a celebrated asylum in Sleswick; and
on the way thither wrote a series of "Fantasies of Travel" which have
all the rich harmony of his earlier verse, and are full of delightful
imagery. He fancied that there was a huge wheel of fire revolving with
furious haste in his head, and his sufferings were terrific. The
following fragment from the notes of his attendant, who kept a record of
his ravings, has a cosmic magnificence:
"The whole trouble comes from that accursed nonsense about the
diadem which they wanted to put on me. You may believe, though,
that it was a splendid piece. Pictures in miniature, not painted,
but living, really existing miniatures of fourteen of the noblest
poets were made into a wreath. It was Homer and Pindar, Tasso and
Virgil, Schiller, Petrarch, Ariosto, Goethe, Sophocles, Leopold,
Milton, and several more. Between each one of them burned a radiant
star, not of tinsel, but of real cosmic material.
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