I think that a sane artist would have some difficulty in
painting a closer likeness of delirium. This reminds me
how frequently I have found, among the poets of asylums,
the tendency to describe insanity ; and it has been a
favourite theme with great poets who have suffered from
ill-health — Tasso, Lenau, Barbara, Musset. Mancini, im-
mediately after his recovery, painted a woman offering
for sale the picture executed by a madman ; and Gill, in
the hospital of Sainte- Anne, painted a raving maniac with
terrible truth to nature.^

Absurdity, — One of the most salient characteristics of
insane art is, as might be expected, absurdity, either in
drawing or colouring. This is especially noteworthy in
some maniacs, owing to the exaggerated association of
ideas, through which the connecting links (which would
serve to explain the author's conception) are totally lost.
Thus, an artist painted a ** Marriage at Cana," with all the
figures of the apostles exceedingly well drawn ; but in
place of the figure of Christ was a large bunch of flowers.
Paralytic patients draw objects without any sense of
proportion ; their hens are the size of horses, and their
cherries of melons ; or, while striving after perfection in
the design, the execution is merely childish. One, who
believed himself a second Horace Vernet, drew horses by
means of four straight strokes and a tail.* Another drew
all his figures upside down. Other dementia patients,
owing to the same amnesia which is apparent in their
speech, leave out the most essential points of their con-
ception, like M at Pesaro, who made an excellent

drawing of a general, seated, but forgot the chair.
