Genius or originality is, for the most part, _some strong quality in
the mind, answering to and bringing out some new and striking quality in
nature._
Imagination is, more properly, the power of carrying on a given feeling
into other situations, which must be done best according to the hold
which the feeling itself has taken of the mind.(1) In new and unknown
combinations the impression must act by sympathy, and not by rule, but
there can be no sympathy where there is no passion, no original
interest. The personal interest may in some cases oppress and
circumscribe the imaginative faculty, as in the instance of Rousseau:
but in general the strength and consistency of the imagination will be
in proportion to the strength and depth of feeling; and it is rarely
that a man even of lofty genius will be able to do more than carry on
his own feelings and character, or some prominent and ruling passion,
into fictitious and uncommon situations. Milton has by allusion embodied
a great part of his political and personal history in the chief
characters and incidents of _Paradise Lost_. He has, no doubt,
wonderfully adapted and heightened them, but the elements are the same;
you trace the bias and opinions of the man in the creations of the poet
above the definition of genius above the definition of genius.
Shakespear (almost alone) seems to have a man of genius raised above the
definition of genious. 'Born universal heir to all humanity,' he was 'as
one, in suffering all who suffered nothing'; with a perfect sympathy
with all things, yet alike indifferent to all: who did not tamper with
Nature or warp her to his own purposes; who 'knew all qualities with a
learned spirit,' instead of judging of them by his own predilections;
and was rather 'a pipe for the Muse's finger to play what stop she
pleasd,' than anxious to set up any character or pretensions of his own.
His genius consisted in the faculty of transforming himself at will into
whatever he chose: his originality was the power of seeing every object
from the exact point of view in which others would see it. He was the
Proteus of human intellect. Genius in ordinary is a more obstinate and
less versatile thing. It is sufficiently exclusive and self-willed,
quaint and peculiar. It does some one thing by virtue of doing nothing
else: it excels in some one pursuit by being blind to all excellence but
its own. It is just the reverse of the cameleon; for it does not borrow,
but lends its colour to all about it; or like the glow-worm, discloses a
little circle of gorgeous light in the twilight of obscurity, in the
night of intellect that surrounds it. So did Rembrandt. If ever there
was a man of genius, he was one, in the proper sense of the term. He
lived in and revealed to otters a world of his own, and might be said to
have invented a new view of nature. He did not discover things _out of_
nature, in fiction or fairy land, or make a voyage to the moon 'to
descry new lands, rivers or mountains in her spotty globe,' but saw
things _in_ nature that every one had missed before him and gave others
eyes to see them with. This is the test and triumph of originality, not
to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily
never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our eyes and
under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, for
want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind,
to seize and retain it. Rembrandt's conquests were not over the _ideal_,
but the real. He did not contrive a new story or character, but we
nearly owe to him a fifth part of painting, the knowledge of
_chiaroscuro_--a distinct power and element in art and nature. He had a
steadiness, a firm keeping of mind and eye, that first stood the shock
of 'fierce extremes' in light and shade, or reconciled the greatest
obscurity and the greatest brilliancy into perfect harmony; and he
therefore was the first to hazard this appearance upon canvas, and give
full effect to what he saw and delighted in. He was led to adopt this
style of broad and startling contrast from its congeniality to his own
feelings: his mind grappled with that which afforded the best exercise
to its master-powers: he was bold in act, because he was urged on by a
strong native impulse. Originality is then nothing but nature and
feeling working in the mind. A man does not affect to be original: he is
so, because he cannot help it, and often without knowing it. This
extraordinary artist indeed might be said to have had a particular organ
for colour. His eye seemed to come in contact with it as a feeling, to
lay hold of it as a substance, rather than to contemplate it as a visual
object. The texture of his landscapes is 'of the earth, earthy'--his
clouds are humid, heavy, slow; his shadows are 'darkness that may be
felt,' a 'palpable obscure'; his lights are lumps of liquid splendour!
There is something more in this than can be accounted for from design or
accident: Rembrandt was not a man made up of two or three rules and
directions for acquiring genius.
I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory a character of Mr.
Wordsworth, though he too, like Rembrandt, has a faculty of making
something out of nothing, that is, out of himself, by the medium through
which he sees and with which he clothes the barrenest subject. Mr.
Wordsworth is the last man to 'look abroad into universality,' if that
alone constituted genius: he looks at home into himself, and is 'content
with riches fineless.' He would in the other case be 'poor as winter,'
if he had nothing but general capacity to trust to. He is the greatest,
that is, the most original poet of the present day, only because he is
the greatest egotist. He is 'self-involved, not dark.' He sits in the
centre of his own being, and there 'enjoys bright day.' He does not
waste a thought on others. Whatever does not relate exclusively
and wholly to himself is foreign to his views. He contemplates a
whole-length figure of himself, he looks along the unbroken line of
his personal identity. He thrusts aside all other objects, all other
interests, with scorn and impatience, that he may repose on his own
being, that he may dig out the treasures of thought contained in it,
that he may unfold the precious stores of a mind for ever brooding over
itself. His genius is the effect of his individual character. He stamps
that character, that deep individual interest, on whatever he meets. The
object is nothing but as it furnishes food for internal meditation, for
old associations. If there had been no other being in the universe, Mr.
Wordsworth's poetry would have been just what it is. If there had been
neither love nor friendship, neither ambition nor pleasure nor business
in the World, the author of the _Lyrical Ballads_ need not have been
greatly changed from what he is--might still have 'kept the noiseless
tenour of his way,' retired in the sanctuary of his own heart, hallowing
the Sabbath of his own thoughts. With the passions, the pursuits, and
imaginations of other men he does not profess to sympathise, but 'finds
tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,
and good in everything.' With a mind averse from outward objects, but
ever intent upon its own workings, he hangs a weight of thought and
feeling upon every trifling circumstance connected with his past
history. The note of the cuckoo sounds in his ear like the voice of
other years; the daisy spreads its leaves in the rays of boyish delight
that stream from his thoughtful eyes; the rainbow lifts its proud arch
in heaven but to mark his progress from infancy to manhood; an old thorn
is buried, bowed down under the mass of associations he has wound about
it; and to him, as he himself beautifully says,
The meanest flow'r that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
It is this power of habitual sentiment, or of transferring the interest
of our conscious existence to whatever gently solicits attention, and
is a link in the chain of association without rousing our passions or
hurting our pride, that is the striking feature in Mr. Wordsworth's mind
and poetry. Others have left and shown this power before, as Wither,
Burns, etc., but none have felt it so intensely and absolutely as to
lend to it the voice of inspiration, as to make it the foundation of a
new style and school in poetry. His strength, as it so often happens,
arises from the excess of his weakness. But he has opened a new avenue
to the human heart, has explored another secret haunt and nook of
nature, 'sacred to verse, and sure of everlasting fame.' Compared with
his lines, Lord Byron's stanzas are but exaggerated common-place, and
Walter Scott's poetry (not his prose) old wives' fables.(2) There is no
one in whom I have been more disappointed than in the writer here spoken
of, nor with whom I am more disposed on certain points to quarrel; but
the love of truth and justice which obliges me to do this, will not
suffer me to blench his merits. Do what he can, he cannot help being an
original-minded man. His poetry is not servile. While the cuckoo returns
in the spring, while the daisy looks bright in the sun, while the
rainbow lifts its head above the storm--
Yet I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And all that thou hast done for me!
Sir Joshua Reynolds, in endeavouring to show that there is no such thing
as proper originality, a spirit emanating from the mind of the artist
and shining through his works, has traced Raphael through a number of
figures which he has borrowed from Masaccio and others. This is a bad
calculation. If Raphael had only borrowed those figures from others,
would he, even in Sir Joshua's sense, have been entitled to the praise
of originality? Plagiarism, in so far as it is plagiarism, is not
originality. Salvator is considered by many as a great genius. He is
what they call an irregular genius. My notion of genius is not exactly
the same as theirs. It has also been made a question; whether there is
not more genius in Rembrandt's Three Trees than in all Claude Lorraine's
landscapes. I do not know how that may be; but it was enough for Claude
to have been a perfect landscape-painter.
Capacity is not the same thing as genius. Capacity may be described to
relate to the quantity of knowledge, however acquired; genius, to its
quality and the mode of acquiring it. Capacity is power over given ideas
combinations of ideas; genius is the power over those which are not
given, and for which no obvious or precise rule can be laid down. Or
capacity is power of any sort; genius is power of a different sort from
what has yet been shown. A retentive memory, a clear understanding, is
capacity, but it is not genius. The admirable Crichton was a person of
prodigious capacity; but there is no proof (that I know) that he had an
atom of genius. His verses that remain are dull and sterile. He could
learn all that was known of any subject; he could do anything if others
could show him the way to do it. This was very wonderful; but that is
all you can say of it. It requires a good capacity to play well at
chess; but, after all, it is a game of skill, and not of genius. Know
what you will of it, the understanding still moves in certain tracks in
which others have trod it before, quicker or slower, with more or less
comprehension and presence of mind. The greatest skill strikes out
nothing for itself, from its own peculiar resources; the nature of the
game is a thing determinate and fixed: there is no royal or poetical
road to checkmate your adversary. There is no place for genius but in
the indefinite and unknown. The discovery of the binomial theorem was an
effort of genius; but there was none shown in Jedediah Buxton's being
able to multiply 9 figures by 9 in his head. If he could have multiplied
90 figures by 90 instead of 9, it would have been equally useless toil
and trouble.(3) He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable
intellectual riches: he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of new
ore. Originality is the seeing nature differently from others, and yet
as it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the
discovery of new and valuable truth. All the world do not see the whole
meaning of any object they have been looking at. Habit blinds them to
some things; short-sightedness to others. Every mind is not a gauge and
measure of truth. Nature has her surface and her dark recesses. She is
deep, obscure, and infinite. It is only minds on whom she makes her
fullest impressions that can penetrate her shrine or unveil her _Holy of
Holies_. It is only those whom she has filled with her spirit that have
the boldness or the power to reveal her mysteries to others. But Nature
has a thousand aspects, and one man can only draw out one of them.
Whoever does this is a man of genius. One displays her force, another
her refinement; one her power of harmony, another her suddenness of
contrast; one her beauty of form, another her splendour of colour. Each
does that for which he is best fitted by his particular genius, that is
to say, by some quality of mind into which the quality of the object
sinks deepest, where it finds the most cordial welcome, is perceived to
its utmost extent, and where again it forces its way out from the
fulness with which it has taken possession of the mind of the student.
The imagination gives out what it has first absorbed by congeniality of
temperament, what it has attracted and moulded into itself by elective
affinity, as the loadstone draws and impregnates iron. A little
originality is more esteemed and sought for than the greatest acquired
talent, because it throws a new light upon things, and is peculiar to
the individual. The other is common; and may be had for the asking, to
any amount.
The value of any work is to be judged of by the quantity of originality
contained in it. A very little of this will go a great way. If Goldsmith
had never written anything but the two or three first chapters of the
_Vicar of Wakefield_ or the character of a Village Schoolmaster, they
would have stamped him a man of genius. The editors of Encyclopedias are
not usually reckoned the first literary characters of the age. The works
of which they have the management contain a great deal of knowledge,
like chests or warehouses, but the goods are not their own. We should
as soon think of admiring the shelves of a library; but the shelves of a
library are useful and respectable. I was once applied to, in a
delicate emergency, to write an article on a difficult subject for an
Encyclopedia, and was advised to take time and give it a systematic and
scientific form, to avail myself of all the knowledge that was to be
obtained on the subject, and arrange it with clearness and method. I
made answer that as to the first, I had taken time to do all that I ever
pretended to do, as I had thought incessantly on different matters for
twenty years of my life;(4) that I had no particular knowledge of the
subject in question, and no head for arrangement; and that the utmost
I could do in such a case would be, when a systematic and scientific
article was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to insert
a remark or illustration of my own (not to be found in former
Encyclopedias), or to suggest a better definition than had been offered
in the text. There are two sorts of writing. The first is compilation;
and consists in collecting and stating all that is already known of any
question in the best possible manner, for the benefit of the uninformed
reader. An author of this class is a very learned amanuensis of other
people's thoughts. The second sort proceeds on an entirely different
principle: instead of bringing down the account of knowledge to the
point at which it has already arrived, it professes to start from
that point on the strength of the writer's individual reflections; and
supposing the reader in possession of what is already known, supplies
deficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the beaten road in
search of new tracts of observation or sources of feeling. It is in vain
to object to this last style that it is disjointed, disproportioned,
and irregular. It is merely a set of additions and corrections to
other men's works, or to the common stock of human knowledge, printed
separately. You might as well expect a continued chain of reasoning
in the notes to a book. It skips all the trite, intermediate, level
common-places of the subject, and only stops at the difficult passages
of the human mind, or touches on some striking point that has been
overlooked in previous editions. A view of a subject, to be connected
and regular, cannot be all new. A writer will always be liable to be
charged either with paradox or common-place, either with dulness or
affectation. But we have no right to demand from any one more than
he pretends to. There is indeed a medium in all things, but to unite
opposite excellencies is a task ordinarily too hard for mortality. He
who succeeds in what he aims at, or who takes the lead in any one mode
or path of excellence, may think himself very well off. It would not
be fair to complain of the style of an Encyclopedia as dull, as wanting
volatile salt; nor of the style of an Essay because it is too light and
sparkling, because it is not a _caput mortuum_. So it is rather an
odd objection to a work that it is made up entirely of 'brilliant
passages'--at least it is a fault that can be found with few works, and
the book might be pardoned for its singularity. The censure might indeed
seem like adroit flattery, if it were not passed on an author whom any
objection is sufficient to render unpopular and ridiculous. I grant it
is best to unite solidity with show, general information with particular
ingenuity. This is the pattern of a perfect style; but I myself do not
pretend to be a perfect writer. In fine, we do not banish light French
wines from our tables, or refuse to taste sparkling Champagne when we
can get it because it has not the body of Old Port. Besides, I do not
know that dulness is strength, or that an observation is slight because
it is striking. Mediocrity, insipidity, want of character is the great
fault.
Mediocribus esse poetis
Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnae.
Neither is this privilege allowed to prose-writers in our time any more
than to poets formerly.
It is not then acuteness of organs or extent of capacity that
constitutes rare genius or produces the most exquisite models of
art, but an intense sympathy with some one beauty or distinguishing
characteristic in nature. Irritability alone, or the interest taken in
certain things, may supply the place of genius in weak and otherwise
ordinary minds. As there are certain instruments fitted to perform
certain kinds of labour, there are certain minds so framed as to produce
certain _chef-d'oeuvres_ in art and literature, which is surely the best
use they can be put to. If a man had all sorts of instruments in his
shop and wanted one, he would rather have that one than be supplied with
a double set of all the others. If he had them twice over, he could only
do what he can do as it is, whereas without that one he perhaps cannot
finish any one work he has in hand. So if a man can do one thing better
than anybody else, the value of this one thing is what he must stand
or fall by, and his being able to do a hundred other things merely
_as well_ as anybody else would not alter the sentence or add to his
respectability; on the contrary, his being able to do so many other
things well would probably interfere with and encumber him in the
execution of the only thing that others cannot do as well as he, and so
far be a drawback and a disadvantage. More people, in fact, fail from a
multiplicity of talents and pretensions than from an absolute poverty
of resources. I have given instances of this elsewhere. Perhaps
Shakespear's tragedies would in some respects have been better if he had
never written comedies at all; and in that case his comedies might well
have been spared, though they must have cost us some regret. Racine,
it is said, might have rivalled Moliere in comedy; but he gave up the
cultivation of his comic talents to devote himself wholly to the tragic
Muse. If, as the French tell us, he in consequence attained to the
perfection of tragic composition, this was better than writing comedies
as well as Moliere and tragedies as well as Crebillon. Yet I count those
persons fools who think it a pity Hogarth did not succeed better in
serious subjects. The division of labour is an excellent principle in
taste as well as in mechanics. Without this, I find from Adam Smith, we
could not have a pin made to the degree of perfection it is. We do not,
on any rational scheme of criticism, inquire into the variety of a man's
excellences, or the number of his works, or his facility of production.
_Venice Preserved_ is sufficient for Otway's fame. I hate all those
nonsensical stories about Lope de Vega and his writing a play in a
morning before breakfast. He had time enough to do it after. If a man
leaves behind him any work which is a model in its kind, we have no
right to ask whether he could do anything else, or how he did it, or
how long he was about it. All that talent which is not necessary to the
actual quantity of excellence existing in the world, loses its object,
is so much waste talent or _talent to let_. I heard a sensible man say
he should like to do some one thing better than all the rest of the
world, and in everything else to be like all the rest of the world. Why
should a man do more than his part? The rest is vanity and vexation
of spirit. We look with jealous and grudging eyes at all those
qualifications which are not essential; first, because they are
superfluous, and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial.
Why does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing,
fencing, etc.? They say, 'It is for his benefit.' It is not for his
reputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But he
was first, not second-rate in both. There is not a greater impertinence
than to ask, if a man is clever out of his profession. I have heard
of people trying to cross-examine Mrs. Siddons. I would as soon try to
entrap one of the Elgin Marbles into an argument. Good nature and common
sense are required from all people; but one proud distinction is enough
for any one individual to possess or to aspire to.