[463] Le Epilessie, p. 19, Turin, 1880.
[464] Shenstone, Darwin, Swift, and Walter Scott were subject to giddiness (Smiles).
[465] See L’Uomo Delinquente, part iii. p. 623.
[466] “There is a fatality,” says Goncourt, “in the first chance which suggests your idea. Then there is an unknown force, a superior will, a sort of necessity of writing which command your work and guide your pen; so much so, that sometimes the book which leaves your hands does not seem to have come out of yourself; it astonishes you, like something which was in you, and of which you were unconscious. That is the impression which Sœur Philomène gives me” (Journal des Goncourt, Paris, 1888). Even Buffon, who had said that invention depends on patience, adds, “One must look at one’s subject for a long time; then it gradually unfolds and develops itself; you feel a slight electric shock strike your head and at the same time seize you at the heart; that is the moment of genius.”
[467] Evidently the author himself.
[468] Dostoïeffsky, Besi, Paris.
[469] Archivio di Psichiatria, ix. 1., p. 89.
[470] Taine, Revue des Deux Mondes—Dec. 1886, and Jan. 1887.
[471] Renan, in Les Apôtres.
[472] Renan.