894 On Genius. 
originality of invention. The greatest poets 
have been scholars; and where the imperfec- 
tion of their education has denied them 
access to the stores of erudition, they have 
supplied the deficiency by acute and exten- 
sive observation on men.(/) Sir Joshua 
Reynolds has well illustrated my meaning in 
his comparison of the works of Luca Gior- 
dano and La Fage with those of Raffaelle.(m) 
The two former artists were distinguished 
for their readiness of invention; in other 
words, they drew on their own resources: 
and yet ‘in all their works’’ says our author, 
“which are (as might be expected) very nu- 
merous, we may lock in vain for any thing 
(1) It would, I think, be difficult to adduce a single example of a poet 
of distinguished excellence, who did not possess, for the times in which 
he lived, a very considerable portion of learning. I say nothing of the 
Greeks, because, as they were the Fathers of art, learning, properly so 
called, could hardly have any existence among them. But of the Re- 
mans, it may sufficé barely to mention the names of Lucretius, Catuilus, 
Ovid, Virgil, Horace and Propertius ; and of the moderns, Dante, 
Chaucer, Ariosto, Tasso, Spencer, Jonson, Fletcher, Milton, Dryden, 
Pope, Collins, Gray.—It may be thought sufficient to array the single 
name of Shakspeare against this long list of authorities for my assertion, 
Dr. Farmer, in his Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare, has indeed very 
decisively disproved the claim of our great dramatist to scholarship ; but 
of learning, in a looser sense of the word, it can hardly be affirmed that 
he was destitute, iu an age, abounding with translations from every 
language, and opening, in the vernacular tongue, sources of information 
on all subjects, of which there is proof, in his works, that ‘our Poet made 
abundant use. 
(m) Works, vol. @d, p. 88—91. 
