The Sanity of True Genius
Anthony Storr
My title is, you will recall, taken from one of the Essays of Elia. Lamb begins his essay with the following words.
"So far from the position holding true, that great wit (or genius, in our modern way of speaking) has a necessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will ever be found in the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive a mad Shakespeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them. "so strong a wit, " says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend,
"—did Nature to him frame,
