‘On the Giddy Brink’

This chapter discusses the vicissitudes of creative madness, enthusiasm, and inspiration in the eighteenth century, in relation to writing by Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, whose satirical attacks damaged the viability of one side of the classical and Renaissance tradition. The chapter then discusses eighteenth-century ‘mad poets’ such as William Collins and William Cowper, and also Charlotte Smith, all of whom subsequently struggled to articulate formerly available ideas of creative madness. This tension is analysed through the discussion of mad poet figures as they appear in later eighteenth-century prospect poetry, in scenes of increasing mental precipitousness. The chapter concludes with a discussion of visual images of poetry and madness in these writers, Goya, and William Blake.