- In the ‘Character of H.B.Constant’ quoted above.
- Charrière, Œuvres, IV, p. 563, letter of 13 September 1794 from Isabelle de
Charrière to Constant. On this point, see Wood (1984), p. 22. - Adolphe, ed. Paul Delbouille, p. 109.
- Library Borrowings Record for the years 1783–5, Edinburgh, University Library.
- RENATI DES CARTES MEDITATIONES De Prima PHILOSOPHIA, In quibus
Dei Existentia, & Animae humanae à corpore Distinctio demonstrantur. His
adjuncta sunt variae objectiones doctorum virorum in istas de Deo & Anima
demonstrationes; CUM RESPONSIONIBUS AUCTORIS. Editio ultima prioribus
auctior & emendatior. [vignette] AMSTELODAMI, Apud DANIELEM
ELSEVIRIUM, [1678]. The title page bears the inscription ‘James Praig prael 2L
8 s:d’. This second-hand copy was probably bought in Edinburgh. - Enrico Caterino Davila (1576–1631) is one of the historians singled out for
discussion, along with ‘De Thou,—Machiavel,—Bentivoglio,—Rawleigh,—
Clarendon’, in the lectures of Alexander Fraser Tytler (see later note). - HSSE, p. 147.
- Several other hypotheses are possible, including schizophrenia, alcoholism and
tertiary syphilis. Syphilis brings with it a gradual change in personality, insanity and
eventual death. However Wilde lived on for another forty years after the onset of
madness, and this would be unlikely if he were syphilitic. At least two other of his
Edinburgh friends lost their minds: Lewis Grant (1767–1840) whose ‘last thirty
years of life were passed in seclusion, owing to incurable mental derangement’
(HSSE, p. 168) and another member of the Speculative Society, Robert Urquhart
who, according to Macknight’s memoir, ‘figured for a while in the highest style of
the fashionable world, then lost his mind, and was reduced to perfect beggary, an
incessant pest, I believe to the Court [he was an advocate], and to all who had ever
know[n] or heard of him’ (f. 155 verso). Knowledge of the insanity of some of his
friends and the death of others must have contributed greatly to Constant’s periods
of pessimism and despair. And yet it is Isabelle de Charrière—in many ways a
remarkably vigorous and positive personality—who generally gets the blame for
Constant’s pessimism: much of Rudler’s biography is taken up with proving her
guilt. The fact that Constant turned to writing and especially to scholarship may have
had something to do with an increasing awareness of the possible long-term
consequences of his early promiscuity. Something like this, however, could underlie
the ‘feeling of uncertainty about fate’ (Adolphe, ed. Paul Delbouille, p. 112) which
Constant shared with Adolphe and the fatalistic lassitude which, we are told, had
diminished in Adolphe as he had grown older. It would be anachronistic, however,
to suggest that Constant could have had any preciseknowledge about the connection
between the first stage of syphilis (local infection) and its third stage (madness,
paralysis, death), which is a discovery of the twentieth century. On this, see Roger
L.Williams, The Horror of Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, esp.
pp. 48–51. - HSSE, p. 147.
- On this, see David Daiches, Sir Walter Scott and his World, London: Thames &
Hudson, 1971, pp. 35–6.
List of abbreviations 277