The diseases of the will / by Th. Ribot.

  • Ribot, Th. (Théodule), 1839-1916.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The diseases of the will / by Th. Ribot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    He fell asleep whilst reading the passage in ‘ Pur- chase Pilgrimage’ in which the ‘stately pleasure house ’ is mentioned ; and, on awaking, he felt as if he had composed from two to three hundred lines, which he had nothing to do but to write down, ‘the images rising up as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.’ The whole of this singular fragment, as it stands, consisting of fifty-four lines, was written as fast as his pen could trace the words; but having been interrupted by a person on business, who stayed with him above an hour, he found, to his sur- prise and mortification, that, ‘though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general pur- port of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away, like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast; but, alas ! without the after-restoration of the latter.’ ” The accounts of his contemporaries regarding his indefatigable conversation, his habit of dreaming aloud, and his perfect forgetfulness of his hearers, leave the impression of an exuberant intelligence, delivered to an unbridled automatism. Curious or amusing anec- dotes on this point abound. I will not give any of them ; I prefer to leave to a master the care of depict- ing the man. Coleridge’s “whole figure and air, good and amia- ble otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute ; expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude ; in walking he rather shuffled than decisively stepped ; and a lady once remarked, he never