graces, and small harmless indecorums, and sets rigid bounds to that liberty to which genius often owes its supreme glory.

1754: Few poets appear to have composed with greater rapidity than Spenser. Hurried away by the impetuosity of imagination, he frequently cannot find time to attend to the niceties of construction; . . . A review of these faults, which flow, perhaps, from that cause which produces his greatest beauties, will tend to explain many passages in particular, and to bring us acquainted with his manner in general.

Thomas Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen, Vol. I, p. 312. 1754: But it is absurd to think of judging either Ariosto or Spenser by precepts which they did not attend to. We who live in the days of writing by rule, are apt to try every composition by those laws which we have been taught to think the sole criterion of excellence. . . . Spenser, and the same may be said of Ariosto, did not live in an age of planning. His poetry is the careless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sensibility. It was his business to engage the fancy, and to interest the attention by bold and striking images, in the formation and disposition of which little labor or art was applied. The various and the marvelous were the chief sources of delight. Hence we find our author ransacking alike the regions of reality and romance, of truth and fiction, to find the proper decoration and furniture for his fairy structure. Thomas Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen, Vol. I, pp. 21 f.

1754: A poetry succeeded, in which imagination gave way to correctness, sublimity of description, to delicacy of sentiment, and majestic imagery to conceit and epigram. Poets began now to be more attentive to words than to things and objects. The nicer beauties of happy expression were preferred to the daring strokes of great conception. Thomas Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen, Vol. II, pp. 105 f. 1728: And, indeed, this may be said in general,--that great subjects are above being nice; that dignity and spirit ever suffer from scrupulous exactness; and that the minuter cares effeminate a composition. Great masters of poetry, painting, and statuary, in their nobler works, have even affected the contrary; and justly; for a truly masculine air partakes more of the negligent than of the neat, both in writings and in life: Grandis oratio haberet majestatis suae pondus. A poem like a criminal, under too severe correction, may lose all its spirit and expire. Young, Vol. I, p. 419.

1727: It is not unlikely, it may be expected, that in an introduction to a collection of poems of a various kind... I should say something of the maxims and rules, in general, of poetry. . . . All the ancients, or the moderns copying after them, have written on this scheme, is no more than a set of very obvious thoughts and observations, which every man of good sense naturally knows without being taught, and which never made a good poet, nor mended a bad one. . . . Those observations or rules were primarily formed upon and designed to serve only as comments to the works of certain great authors, who composed those works without any such help; the mighty originals from whence they were drawn were produced without them; and unluckily for all rules, it has commonly happened since, that those writers have succeeded the worst who have pretended to have been most assisted by them.

Leonard Welsted, A Dissertation, p. 16.

1712: If we consider the works of nature and art, as they are qualified to entertain the imagination, we shall find the last very defective, in comparison of the former.

...

There is something more bold and masterly in the rough, careless strokes of nature than in the nice touches and embellishments of art.

Addison, Spect. No. 414.

1712: There is sometimes a greater judgment shown in deviating from the rules of art than in adhering to them; and . . . there is more beauty in the works of a great genius who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius who not only knows, but scrupulously observes them. Addison, Spect. No. 592.

1711: There appears something nobly wild and extravagant in these great natural geniuses that is infinitely more beautiful than all the turn and polishing of what the French call a bel esprit, by which they would express a genius refined by conversation, reflection, and the reading of the most polite authors. 1711: Some beauties yet no precepts can declare.

Music resembles poetry; in each

Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master hand alone can reach.

Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which, without passing through the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.

Addison, Spect. No. 160.

Pope, Essay on Criticism, p. 42 f. 1690: After all, the utmost that can be achieved or, I think, pretended by any rules in this art is but to hinder some men from being very ill poets, but not to make any man a very good one.

Sir William Temple, Of Poetry, ed. Spingarn, Vol. III, p. 84.

1688: What a prodigious difference there is between a work that is beautiful and one that is merely regular and without faults! . . . It is easier for a great genius to attain sublimity and grandeur than to avoid every trifling fault. . . . When the reading of a book elevates the mind, and inspires brave and noble sentiments, seek no other rule by which to judge it; it is good, and made by the hand of a true workman.

La Bruyère, Caractères Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit, Spingarn, Intro., p. XCVIII. Conjectures (p. 50): Rules, like crutches, are a needful aid to the lame, though an impediment to the strong. A Homer casts them away; and like his Achilles, Jura negat sibi nata, nihil non arrogat, by native force of mind.

1754: Spenser's native force of invention would not suffer him to pursue the letter of a prescribed fiction with scrupulous observation and servile regularity.

Thomas Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen, Vol. I, p. 93. 1698: Elegance of thought is what we commonly call wit, which adds to propriety, beauty, and pleases our fancy, while propriety entertains our judgment. This depends so much on genius, that 'tis impossible to teach it by rules. . . to attend to a great

many rules whilst you are writing, is the way to make your style stiff and constrained, whereas elegance consists very much in a genteel ease and freedom of expression. John Hughes, Style, Vol. 1, p. 251. Conjectures (p. 50): There is something in poetry beyond prose-reason; there are mysteries in it not to be explained, but admired.

1739: Besides all these qualities which render a person lovely or valuable, there is also a certain je-ne-sais-quoi of agreeable and handsome, that concurs to the same effect. In this case, as in that of wit and eloquence, we must have recourse to a certain sense, which acts without reflexion, and regards not the tendencies of qualities and characters. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, p. 366. Conjectures (p. 50): Genius often then deserves most to be praised when it is most sure to be condemned; that, when its excellence, from mounting high, to weak eyes is quite out of sight.

1712: The most exquisite words and finest strokes of an author are those which very often appear the most doubtful and exceptionable to a man who wants a relish for polite learning; and they are these which a sour, undistinguishing critic generally attacks with the greatest violence. Addison, Spect. No. 291.

Conjectures (p. 50): Genius, therefore, leaves but the second place, among men of letters, to the learned. It is their merit and ambition to fling light on the works of genius, and point out its charms.

1714: The ancient critics are full of the praises of their contemporaries; they discover beauties which escaped the observation of the vulgar, and very often find out reasons for palliating and excusing such little slips and oversights as were committed in the writings of eminent authors. Addison, Spect. No. 592.

1711: Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find

Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind.

Pope, Essay on Criticism, p. 48 f.

1701: Imperfect, partial, prejudiced critics have judgment enough to discover faults, but want discernment to find out beauties . . your lordship easily found that he had beauties which overweighed all faults.

.

John Dennis, Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry, preface. 1693: Ill writers are usually the sharpest censors; for they, as the best poet and the best patron said,

When in the full perfecton of decay,

Turn vinegar, and come again in play.

Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic; I mean of a critic in the general acceptation of this age; for formerly they were quite another species of men. They were defenders of poets, and commentators on their works; to illustrate obscure beauties; to place some passages in a better light; to redeem others from malicious interpretations; to help out an author's modesty, who is not ostentatious of his wit; and in short, to shield him, etc. . . . Are our auxiliary forces turned our enemies? . . or, to speak in the most honorable terms of them, are they, from our seconds, become principals against us?

Dryden, Dedication to Translations from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

1674: In the first place, I must take leave to tell them, that they wholly mistake the nature of criticism who think its business is principally to find fault. Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which should delight a reasonable reader. If the design, the conduct, the thoughts, and the expressions of a poem, be generally such as proceed from a true genius of poetry, the critic ought to pass his judgment in favor of the author. 'Tis malicious and unmanly to snarl at the little lapses of a pen, from which Virgil himself stands not exempted. Horace acknowledges, that honest Homer nods sometimes. . . . And Longinus, who was undoubtedly, after Aristotle, the greatest critic amongst the Greeks, in his twenty seventh chapter epi "Tyovs, has judiciously preferred the sublime genius that sometimes errs, to the meddling or indifferent one, which makes a few faults, but seldom or never rises to any excellence. Dryden, The Author's Apology for Heroic Poetry and Poetic License, pp. 179 f. Conjectures (p. 50): A star of the first magnitude among the moderns was Shakespeare; among the ancients, Pindar; who (as Vossius tells us) boasted of his no-learning, calling himself the eagle, for his flight above it. And such genii as these may indeed have much reliance on their own native powers. For genius may be compared to the body's natural strength, learning to the super-induced accoutrements of arms: if the first is equal to the proposed exploit, the latter rather encumbers, than assists; rather retards than promotes, the victory.

1752: With respect to the productions of imagination and wit, a mere determination of the will is not sufficient; there must be a disposition of the mind which no human being can procure, or the work will have the appearance of a forced plant, in the production of which the industry of art has been substituted for the vigor of nature. The Adventurer, No. 2.

1721: Shakespeare was one of the greatest geniuses that the world ever saw for the tragic stage. Though he lay under greater disadvantages than any of his successors, yet had he greater and more genuine beauties than the best and greatest of them. And what makes the brightest glory of his character, those beauties were entirely his own, and owing to the force of his own nature; whereas his faults were owing to his education, and to the age that he lived in. Dennis, Letters, Vol. II, p. 371. 1712: Among the English, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak superstitious part of his reader's imagination; and made him capable of succeeding, where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius. Addison, Spect. No. 419.

1693: I confess, there are some men's constitutions of body and mind so vigorous, and well framed by nature, that they need not much assistance from others; but by the strength of their natural genius, they are, from their cradles, carried towards what is excellent; and, by the privilege of their happy constitutions, are able to do wonders. Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Vol. IX, p. 6.

1690: But after all, I do not know whether the higher flights of wit and knowledge, like those of power and of empire in the world, may not have been made by the pure

native force of spirit or genius in some single men, rather than by any derived strength among them, however increased by succession, and whether they might not have been the achievements of nature, rather than the improvements of art.

Sir William Temple, On Ancient and Modern Learning. Conjectures (p. 50 f.): Sacer nobis inest deus, says Seneca. With regard to the moral world, conscience, with regard to the intellectual, genius is that god within.

1742-45: Who conscience sent, her sentence will support,

And God above assert that God in man.

Young, Vol. I, p. 181.

1655: But if a man will make an observation upon words and language, he might further observe that heathens did not only use the word ardor to express their heat in this kind; but even the word spirit. So Ovid; At Sacri vates, etc. Sedibus aetheriis spiritus ille venit. And again: Sic ubi mota calent sacro mea pectora thyrso; altior humano spiritus ille malo est. And this spirit is no less than a very God unto him, elsewhere, Est Deus in nobis, etc., as afterwards, in its proper place, out of him, or some other of greater authority than he, shall be declared. But we give it place here, because this ardor, heat or spirit, that possesseth orators and poets, yea soldiers and others, was by divers heathens deemed but one and the same, in its nature though working so differently, as hereafter shall be showed. Now on the other side, that ardor mentis is sometimes used by Christian writers for spiritus sanctus, is observable Casaubon, Enthusiasm, p. 65.

too.

1634 (?): Which doth confirm me in my first opinion, that every author has his own genius, directing him by a secret inspiration to that wherein he may most excel.

Sir William Alexander, Anacrisis, ed. Spingarn, p. 185.

Conjectures (p. 51): Of genius there are two species, an earlier, and a later; or call them infantine, and adult. An adult genius comes out of nature's hand, as Pallas out of Jove's head, at full growth, and mature: Shakespeare's genius was of this kind: on the contrary, Swift stumbled at the threshold, and set out for distinction on feeble knees: his was an infantine genius; a genius which, like other infants, must be nursed and educated, or it will come to nought. Learning is its nurse and tutor.

1756: Different geniuses unfold themselves at different periods of life. In some minds the ore is a long time in ripening.

Joseph Warton, Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, p. 76. 1711: This second class of great geniuses are those that have formed themselves by rules, and submitted the greatness of their natural talents to the corrections and restraints of art. Addison, Spect. No. 160.

1690: But though invention be the mother of poetry, yet this child is, like all others, born naked, and must be nourished with care, clothed with exactness and elegance, educated with industry, instructed with art, improved by application, corrected with severity, and accomplished with labor and with time, before it arrives at any great perfection or growth. Sir William Temple, Of Poetry, ed. Spingarn, Vol. III, p. 80.