AND IMAGINATION. 



tion or process of inquiry. Go into the country, and you will find the same 

 difference among our husbandmen and agriculturists ; while some among them 

 have no more imagination than the clods they cleave with their ploughshares, 

 others seem to penetrate intuitively the nice order of vegetation, and never 

 suffer a season to roll over them vvithout wringing from it some important 

 secret ; as Aristaeus in the Georgics from the pinioned form of old Pro- 

 teus. Go to our manufacturing and mechanical towns — to Manchester, Bir- 

 mingham, and Sheffield, and you will, in like manner, meet with artisans and 

 handicrafts who discover the same acuteness of intelligence, the same rapid 

 combination of consenting ideas, the same superiority of genius or talent in 

 their respective callings beyond that which is possessed by their 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 inspiri-ng 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 ge- -i 

 nius ; 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 en:inent cari- 

 cature draughtsmen of the present day. The broad laughter or other dis- 

 tortion of the features, which they so frequently present to us, often discovers 

 a powerful genius in this particular line, and, as displaying the eflect of mus- 

 cular 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 ge- 

 nius for the art ; and in one instance the prize fell upon a cobbler, who dis- 

 covered so much accomplishment, and excited so much applause, that a hard- 

 hearted young woman, whom he had in vain wooed foi five years before, 

 immediately gave him her hand, and was married to him the week following. 

 Now, here, as in the Dutch paintings 1 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 deficient taste in persons of the most elevated genius, 

 and whose general taste is acknowledged by every one to be sufficiently cor- 

 rect. As one instance, I may perhaps mention that Reubens, in his very ex- 

 cellent picture of Daniel in the lions' den, has given a human expression to 



