fellows, as in the cases to which I have alluded already.

Genius, then, wherever it is found, and to whatever purpose directed, is mental power; it acts by an invisible impulse, and appears to act miraculously. And hence, indeed, its name-a name common to all the world- derived from the Hebrew, copied thence into the Sanscrit, Arabic, and Chinese; from the eastern tongues into the Latin, and from the Latin into our own, and almost every other language of modern Europe, and importing, in every instance, in its radical signification, a tutelary, a guiding, or inspiring divinity.

It is genius, then, that must control the imagination, if the pictures it paints be of any value, if the ideas it combines be combined skilfully or accordantly, if the feelings it excites be pleasurable, or the result it produces be beneficial.

To give full efficacy, however, to the daring flights of the imagination, there is another power of the mind which must associate with the attribute of genius, and that is TASTE; which I have already defined to be that mental faculty which selects and relishes such combinations of ideas as produce genuine beauty, and rejects the contrary.

Imagination, therefore, is as necessary to the existence of taste as of genius; since each equally depends upon this active and vivacious power for the materials with which it is to work. For the most part, taste and genius are united in the same mind, but not necessarily or always so; and hence they are by no means the same thing.

We see evident proofs of this in many of the

subjects selected by the lowest class of the Dutch painters, and by several of the most eminent caricature draughtsmen of the present day. The broad laughter or other distortion of the features, which they so frequently present to us, often discovers a powerful genius in this particular line, and, as displaying the effect of muscular action, may afford to the young painter a useful study; but the ideas are too ludicrous and violent for real beauty, and have, hence, no pretensions to pure taste.

Among the whims and follies which have successively risen into notice in our own country, there appears at one time, among the lower ranks of life, to have been an odd and singular fashion for grinning. The third volume of the Spectator contains a paper that gives a very humorous account of this elegant rage; and informs us that grinning clubs were established in different parts of the country, grinning matches proposed, and grinning prizes adjudged to the winner. Among the competitors in this new Olympic game, there were some who seem to have been endowed with a peculiar genius for the art; and in one instance the prize fell upon a cobbler, who discovered so much accomplishment and excited so much applause, that a hard-hearted young woman, whom he had in vain wooed for five years before, immediately gave him her hand, and was married to him the week following. Now here, as in the Dutch paintings I have just noticed, whatever may have been the genius displayed, every one, I apprehend, will admit that it was genius without

taste.

Let us, however, ascend to nobler regions. We occasionally meet with particular instances of defi

cient taste in persons of the most elevated genius, and whose general taste is acknowledged by every one to be sufficiently correct. As one instance, I may perhaps mention that Reubens, in his very excellent picture of Daniel in the lions' den, has given a human expression to the faces of the savage beasts. His intention is clear; it is that of representing them as endowed with human feeling on the occasion. The conception unquestionably implies genius, but its taste will not be so readily allowed. We meet with a similar error in the battle of Constantine, by Giulio Romano, where the face of one of the horses is, for the same reason, animated with a human character, expressive of doubtful thought and suspicion; while the ears and hair of the forehead, for the sake of greater fierceness, are drawn from the features of the bull. Now, in centaurs, chimæras, and other ideal animals, this intermixture of attributes is readily allowable, for here the imagination may sport without restraint: but it is a law of genuine taste, that natural objects should have their natural characters, their proper features and expression; or, in other words, that the principle of association adhered to by nature should be adhered to by those who copy her.

Our best and most celebrated poets furnish us occasionally with similar instances of genius unaccompanied by taste. Homer himself is not altogether free from this imputation. Let me first set before you one of his most exquisite pictures, in which taste and genius equally combine. The passage I refer to is his delineation, in the eighth book of the Iliad, of a night-scene before Troy. Mr. Pope's is an excellent version, but I take Mr. Cow

per's, as equally excellent, and more true to the original :

As when, around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hush'd,
The groves, the mountain tops, the headland heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapour streaks

The boundless blue, but ether open'd wide

All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd:
So numerous seem'd those fires, between the stream
Of Xanthus blazing, and the fleet of Greece,
In prospect all of Troy.

Could it be supposed, that he who could imagine so finely, and describe so delicately, would in the same poem compare the contest of the Greeks and Trojans for the body of Patroclus, which it seems was tugged for in every direction, to a gang of curriers stretching out a hide? Or, that in his Odyssey, he would liken Ulysses, restless and tossing on his bed, to a hungry man turning a piece of tripe on the coals for his supper?

Now, in both these cases the similes are true to nature, and strikingly illustrative; they are full of genius, but they are destitute of taste; they want picturesque beauty. To nature, indeed, they must be true; for the merit of Homer as a painter from nature is that in which he stands most distinguished from all other poets. In variety, accuracy, and force his similes greatly surpass those of any of his successors and imitators; and they form a gallery of delineations which the student of poetry and the cultivator of genius cannot survey with too much attention:

Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;

Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the muses upwards to their spring.*

In looking very lately over the satires of Dr. Young, which, upon the whole, are written with great force and truth of character, I could scarcely avoid smiling at a simile which, like the preceding, is exact enough in itself, but highly ludicrous from its utter deficiency of taste. In describing the man whose whole pursuits are made up of nothing but trifling and empty joys, he compares him to a cat in an air-pump. Now, this might have been well enough in Hudibras, or any other burlesque poem; but is altogether inconsistent with a vein of serious composition. In the following comparison, on the contrary, he is highly ingenious and successful; and we admire the adroitness with which he brings into various points of resemblance ideas that at first sight appear to be perfectly discrepant; for quicksilver and pleasure do not seem to have any natural connexion:

Pleasures are few, and fewer we enjoy ;

Pleasure, like quicksilver, is bright and coy:
We strive to grasp it with our utmost skill,
Still it eludes us,
and it glitters still.

If seiz'd at last, compute your mighty gains,

What is it but rank poison in your veins?

There is no subject that has been more frequently made choice of by dramatic writers than the story of Edipus Tyrannus. We owe it, in the first instance, to Sophocles; and the best copies of it in modern times are those by Corneille and Voltaire. It is unquestionably full of suspense, agitation, and

* Art of Criticism.