Our own novelist Bulwer Lytton disappeared at times, and plunged
into the wildest excesses among wretches whom he would have loathed
when he was in his normal state of mind. He used to dress himself as a
navvy, or as a sailor, and no one would have recognized the weird
intellectual face when the great writer was clad in rags, and when the
brutal mask of intoxication had fallen over his face. It was during his
recovery from one of these terrible visitations that he drove the woman
whom he most loved from his house, and brought on that breach which
resulted in irreparable misery. Poor George Morland, the painter, had
wild spells of debauch, during which he spent his time in boxing-saloons
among ruffianly prize-fighters and jockeys. His vice grew upon him, his
mad fits became more and more frequent, and at last his exquisite work
could be produced only when his nerve was temporarily steadied by
copious doses of brandy. Keats, who "worshipped Beauty," was afflicted
by seizures like those of Turner and Morland. On one occasion he
remained in a state of drunkenness for six weeks; and it is a wonder
that his marvellous mind retained its freshness at all after the poison
had passed from amid the delicate tissues of the brain.
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