In the moments that precede sleep, when the black space
before the eyes of the poet teems with lovely faces, or dawns into a
spirit-landscape, face after face of suffering, in all varieties of
expression, would crowd, as if compelled by the accompanying fiends, to
present themselves, in awful levee, before the inner eye of the expectant
master. Then he would rise, light his lamp, and, with rapid hand, make
notes of his visions; recording, with swift successive sweeps of his
pencil, every individual face which had rejoiced his evil fancy. Then he
would return to his couch, and, well satisfied, fall asleep to dream yet
further embodiments of human ill.
"What wrong could man or mankind have done him, to be thus fearfully
pursued by the vengeance of the artist's hate?
"Another characteristic of the faces and form which he drew was, that they
were all beautiful in the original idea. The lines of each face, however
distorted by pain, would have been, in rest, absolutely beautiful; and the
whole of the execution bore witness to the fact that upon this original
beauty the painter had directed the artillery of anguish to bring down the
sky-soaring heights of its divinity to the level of a hated existence.
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