Protean Madness and the Poetic Identities of Smart, Cowper, and Blake

Protean Madness and the Poetic Identities of Smart, Cowper, and Blake Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Richard Paul Stern 1 Statement of Originality I, Richard Paul Stern, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Richard Stern Date: 15/09/2016 2 Abstract This thesis offers a comparative analysis of the poetic identities of Christopher Smart (1722-71), William Cowper (1731-1800) and William Blake (1757) in the context of contemporary understandings of madness and changing ideas of personal and spiritual identity from c.1750-1820. Critical attention is focused on the chameleonic status of madness in its various manifestations, of which melancholy, particularly in its religious guise, is particularly important. This thesis adopts an historicist approach that emphasizes poetic voice, and registers a close analysis of the arguments and diction employed in poetry, prose and medical writing associated with eighteenth-century madness. Rather than assuming a pathological status for these poets, I have paid close attention to the way in which madness is represented in the work itself and drawn contrasts with significant contemporary ideas in influential medical discourse. The thesis looks at key long poems including Smart’s Jubilate Agno (written c.1758-63), Cowper’s series of moral satires in Poems (1782), and Blake’s The Four Zoas (written c.1797-1807), as well as some prose writing and letters, all of which contend with issues that underlie the public and medical scrutiny of madness in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: the line between madness and strong religious convictions; the relationship between the body and the soul; anxieties about the social order and the national character; and a burgeoning individualism. The argument is attentive to the importance of language in medicine as well as poetry, and analyses the diction employed by several eighteenth- century mad-doctors, most notably the St. Luke’s physician, William Battie (1703-1776); the cleric, physician, and poet, Nathaniel Cotton (1707-1788); and the controversial Bethlem apothecary and prolific medical writer, John Haslam (1764-1844). Although historically grounded, the thesis makes connections between the eighteenth-century culture of madness and contemporary understandings of mental disturbance. 3 Contents Acknowledgments – 5 Chapter 1: Introduction – 6 Chapter 2: Madness and Poetic Identity in Smart’s Jubilate Agno (c.1758-63) – 54 Chapter 3: Madness, Religious Melancholy, and Self-Identity in Cowper’s Adelphi (c.1767-70) and Letters (1760s-80s) – 101 Chapter 4: Madness, Religious Melancholy, and Poetic Identity in Poems by William Cowper, Of the Inner Temple, Esq (1782) – 152 Chapter 5: Insanity and Spectres in Blake’s The Four Zoas (c.1797-1807) and Other Works – 208 Chapter 6: Conclusion – 261 Appendix I: Timeline – 270 Appendix II: Artwork – 276 Bibliography – 286 4 Acknowledgments I would like to express my thanks to Professor Christopher Reid, my supervisor, who has been very generous in his support of my thesis and provided invaluable suggestions and commentary throughout. I have thoroughly enjoyed the discussions we have had about madness and literature in the eighteenth century which always helped to sustain my enthusiasm for the research. I would also like to express my gratitude for the kindness and support of Helena Goodwyn and Lara Atkin during my time at Queen Mary. I am grateful for the English Research Fund at Queen Mary which enabled me to visit the Houghton Library, Harvard, where I looked at the manuscript of Smart’s Jubilate Agno and other texts. Finally, I am deeply grateful for the love and support of my parents and my brother, and this thesis is dedicated to them. 5 Chapter 1: Introduction ‘One Power alone makes a Poet. - Imagination The Divine Vision’ William Blake (1757-1827) made this remark when annotating Wordsworth’s Poems (1815). ‘I see in Wordsworth’, Blake observes, ‘the Natural Man rising up against the Spiritual Man Continually & then he is No Poet but a Heathen Philosopher at Enmity against all true Poetry or Inspiration’.1 Blake’s emphasis on a spiritual identity was shared by the two other eighteenth-century poets who are subject to close attention in this thesis: Christopher Smart (1722-1771) and William Cowper (1731-1800). Cowper’s work reveals a much less emphatic sense of divinity than that conveyed by Blake above. The poet of ‘The Contrite Heart’, one of the Olney Hymns co-written with the Anglican clergyman, John Newton (1725-1807), confesses to divided feelings in the desire to reach the deity: ‘I sometimes think myself inclin’d / To love thee, if I could; / But often feel another mind, / Averse to all that’s good’.2 The poetry of Smart expresses no such troubled desire. A Song to David (1763), published just after the poet had been released from a private madhouse, and in the same year when Cowper entered one, has an absolutely triumphant ending which fully participates in the glory of Christ: Glorious – more glorious is the crown Of Him, that brought salvation down By meekness, call’d thy Son; Thou at stupendous truth believ’d, And now the matchless deed’s atchiev’d, DETERMINED, DARED, and DONE. FINIS.3 1 William Blake, ‘Annotations to Wordsworth’s Poems (1815)’, in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. by David V. Erdman (New York: Anchor, Doubleday Books, 1988), p.665, p.1. All subsequent references to this edition of Blake’s work will appear parenthetically within the text, citing the page of the Erdman edition, followed by the page (or plate) number of the manuscript, followed by the line number(s) of the poem where applicable, as (E665, p.1, …). 2 William Cowper, ‘Hymn IX’, in The Poems of William Cowper, 1748-1782, ed. by John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), I, p.148, 9-12. All subsequent references to this edition of Cowper’s work will appear parenthetically within the text, citing the volume in question, the page of the Baird and Ryskamp edition, followed by the line number(s) of the poem, as (I, p.148, 9-12). 3 Christopher Smart, The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart; Religious Poetry 1763-1771, ed. by Marcus Walsh and Karina Williamson, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), II. (LXXXXVI), p.147, 511-16. All 6 The visionary power of the imagination that Blake and Smart celebrate so vociferously was suspiciously regarded by many eighteenth-century mad-doctors. Thomas Arnold (1742-1816), for instance, pathologized an over-active imagination in his Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and Prevention of Insanity (1782-86).4 ‘Too great Activity of Imagination’ is filed under the ‘Mental Causes’ of insanity, which include a comprehensive list of the passions.5 According to Arnold, the imagination could provoke a pathological condition, ‘calculated to give occasion to insanity, as well by the very active vibrations which it excites in the fibres and vessels of the brain, as by its natural alliance with folly’.6 Arnold applauds Shakespeare: ‘It is with much propriety, therefore, that the Poet of Nature has connected, by this common character of imagination, the poet, the lover, and the madman’.7 In recent years, poetry and medicine seem to have moved closer together, but Arnold’s remark is a reminder that they have never been estranged.8 Cowper’s doctor, Nathaniel Cotton (1707-88), was both a clergyman and a respected poet, who wrote religious verse which self-deprecated his work as a physician. Cotton had a more settled position than Cowper when it came to matters of spiritual identity: ‘For let the witling argue all he can, / It is Religion still that makes the man’.9 This thesis offers a comparative analysis of poetic practice and medical discourse in relation to madness and identity in England from c.1750 to c.1820, with particular reference to Smart, Cowper, and Blake. My interest in eighteenth-century madness is grounded in modern psychiatric subsequent references to this edition of Smart’s work will appear parenthetically within the text, citing the volume in question, the page of the Walsh and Williamson edition, followed by the line number(s) of the poem, as (II, p.147, 511-16). 4 Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and Prevention of Insanity, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London: Printed for Richard Philips, 1806). Hereafter, Arnold’s Observations. 5 Arnold, ‘Contents’ in Observations, II. Arnold’s causes are divided between ‘Mental’ and ‘Bodily Causes’. 6 Arnold, II, p.267. 7 Arnold, II, pp.267-68. ‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, / Are of imagination all compact’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene I). 8 I am thinking of ‘The Poetry of Medicine Project’, which runs workshops on literature, medicine and the NHS, given by medics as well as literature academics.

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