According to Jenny Uglow, author of
Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense,
during his long career as a fine artist
Edward Lear suffered from depression,
bronchitis, asthma, seizures, and partial
loss of vision. He turned to poetry after
painting for many years; many of his
best-known poems were written relatively
late in his life.
A gifted pleinairist,
his gouaches the fairest
around,
the masterful figments
he fashioned with pigments
delight.
His painterly vision
was brightly elysian,
despite
depression’s miasma,
bronchitis, and asthma.
He found
each spasm and seizure
that shattered his leisure
a curse,
and deemed unamusing
the specter of losing
his sight.
He could have lamented
and blindly resented
his plight,
and numbed his afflictions
with toxic addictions,
or worse.
But being both brilliant
and rather resilient-
ly bright,
he focused on rhyming
with metrical timing,
and hatched
his lyrical creatures
with whimsical features,
dispatched
to circle forever,
inspiring whoever
they might.
His rhymed innovations
and playful creations
were right;
as much as his curses
were heavy, his verses
were light.