The Culture Blog For Connoisseurs Of Everything

A cautionary tale of the perils of literary success, from Andrew Marvell’s The Rehearsal Transpros’d (1672):

Nothing now would serve him but he must be a madman in print, and write a book of Ecclesiastical Policy. There he distributes all the Territories of Conscience into the Princes Province, and makes the Hierarchy to be but Bishops of the Air: and talks at such an extravagant rate in things of higher concernment, that the Reader will avow that in the whole discourse he had not one lucid interval. This Book he was so bent upon, that he sate up late at nights, and wanting sleep, and drinking sometimes Wine to animate his Fancy, it increas’d his Distemper. Beside that too he had the misfortune to have two Friends, who being also out of their wits, and of the same though something a calmer phrensy, spurr’d him on perpetually with commendation. But when his Book was once come out, and he saw himself an Author: that some of the Galants of the Town layd by the new Tune and the Tay, tay, tarry, to quote some of his impertinencies; that his Title page was posted and pasted up at every avenue next under the Play for that afternoon at the Kings or the Dukes House; the Vain-Glory of this totally confounded him. He lost all the little remains of his understanding, and his Cerebellum was so dryed up that there was more brains in a Walnut and both their Shells were alike thin and brittle… so this Gentleman, in the Dog-dayes, stragling by Temple-bar, in a massy Cassock and Surcingle, and taking the opportunity at once to piss and admire the Title-page of his Book; a tall Servant of his, one J.O. that was not so careful as he should be, or whether he did it of purpose, lets another Book of four hundred leaves fall upon his head; which meeting with the former fracture in his Cranium, and all the concurrent Accidents already mentioned, has utterly undone him.