"Some deemed him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad"
About this Quote
A single line, split cleanly down the middle, captures the social mechanism by which reputations are made: genius and insanity are often the same performance viewed from different seats. Beattie’s phrasing is deceptively plain. “Some deemed” and “some believed” are verbs of attribution, not evidence; the line isn’t arguing for wisdom or madness so much as exposing how quickly a community turns judgment into “truth” by repeating it.
The tension hinges on the symmetry. “Wondrous wise” has a singsong glow, almost fairytale praise, while “mad” lands with blunt finality. Beattie makes the compliment feel ornamental and the insult feel decisive. That imbalance is the point: admiration tends to be elaborate, but condemnation is efficient. The line shows how a person can become a screen for other people’s needs - the crowd wants either a sage to revere or a lunatic to dismiss, and it will sort the same behavior into whichever category keeps its worldview tidy.
Context matters. Writing in the late Enlightenment, Beattie lived amid a public hunger for reason and a simultaneous fascination with enthusiasm, melancholy, and “singular” minds. The era celebrated rational improvement yet policed eccentricity; originality could read as moral danger. In that climate, the poet’s “him” becomes an archetype: the thinker or artist whose deviation from norms forces society to choose between canonization and exile. The line works because it refuses to resolve the case. It dramatizes the verdicts, not the defendant, and leaves us staring at the jury.
The tension hinges on the symmetry. “Wondrous wise” has a singsong glow, almost fairytale praise, while “mad” lands with blunt finality. Beattie makes the compliment feel ornamental and the insult feel decisive. That imbalance is the point: admiration tends to be elaborate, but condemnation is efficient. The line shows how a person can become a screen for other people’s needs - the crowd wants either a sage to revere or a lunatic to dismiss, and it will sort the same behavior into whichever category keeps its worldview tidy.
Context matters. Writing in the late Enlightenment, Beattie lived amid a public hunger for reason and a simultaneous fascination with enthusiasm, melancholy, and “singular” minds. The era celebrated rational improvement yet policed eccentricity; originality could read as moral danger. In that climate, the poet’s “him” becomes an archetype: the thinker or artist whose deviation from norms forces society to choose between canonization and exile. The line works because it refuses to resolve the case. It dramatizes the verdicts, not the defendant, and leaves us staring at the jury.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (poem), James Beattie, 1771 — line from Beattie's poem often printed in collected editions |
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