Drydcn and the Critical Canons of the Eighteenth Century 5 



by its propriet)-. An artist is particularly distinguished by the 

 adaptation of his means to his end. But for the impartial critic 

 to overlook the inequalities — above all, the extravagance and 

 waste of the Elizabethans, even of Shakespeare himself, is im- 

 possible. The amount of genius that Shakespeare frequently 

 squandered on a play is something appalling and is quite enough 

 in itself to justify the distinction that Dryden was attempting.^ 

 For as a matter of fact this distinction between artist and genius, 

 of which so much has been made within our own memory, is quite 

 in the vein of the eighteenth century and was drawn by them 

 before us. Substantially to the same effect as Dryden, though 

 more temperately, Addison gives to "this criticism, in Spectator 

 No. 160. what may be called its classical expression: 



"Among" great genius's, those few draw the admiration of the world 

 upon them, and stand up as the prodigies of mankind, who by the mere 

 strength of natural parts, and Without any assistance of art or learning, 

 have produced works that were the delight of their own times and the 

 wonder of posterity. There appears something nobly wild and extrava- 

 gant in these great genius's that is infinitely more beautiful than all the 

 turn and polishing of what the French call a bcl esprit, by which they 

 would express a genius refined by conversation, reflection, and the reading 

 of the most polite authors. . . 



"Many of these great natural genius's that were never disciplined and 

 broken by the rules of art, are to be found among the ancients, and in 

 particular among those of the more eastern parts of the world. . . At 

 the same time that we allow a greater and more daring genius to the 

 ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much failed in, or, 

 if you will, that they were much above the nicety and correctness of the 

 moderns. . . 



"There is another kind of great genius's which I shall place in a second 

 class, not' as I think them infA-ior to the tirst, but only for distinction's 

 sake as they are of a different kind. This second class of great genius's 

 are those that have formed themselves by rules, and submitted the great- 

 ness of their natural talents to the corrections and restraints of art. . , 



"The genius in both these classes of authors may be equally great, but 

 it shews itself after a different manner. In the first it is like a rich soil in 

 a happy climate, that produces a whole wilderness of noble plants rising 

 in a thousand beautiful landskips without any certain order or regularity. 



'"I think there is no folly so great in any part of our age, as the su- 

 perfluity and waste of wit was in some of our predecessors."' Dryden, 

 Preface to an Evening's Love. 



