464 



ON TASTE, GENIUS, 



the faces of the savage beasts. His intention is clear ; it is that of repre- 

 senting them as endowed with human feeling on the occasion. The con- 

 ception 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 suspi- 

 cion; while the ears and hair of the forehead, for the sake of greater fierce- 

 ness, are drawn from the features of the bull. Now, in centaurs, chimeras, 

 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 ge- 

 nuine 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 alto- 

 gether 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 

 T 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. Cowper'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 husli'd, 

 The groves, the niouniain-iops, the headland heights 

 Stand all apytarent, not a vapour streaks 

 1 The boundless blue, but ether opeu'd wide 



All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd : 

 So numerous seem'd those fires, between the stream 

 Of Xanihus blazin<r, 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 1 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 sur- 

 pass 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 can- 

 not survey with too much attention : — 



Be Homer's works your study and delight, 

 I Read them by day, and meditate by night ; 



\ Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring, 



~ ! And trace the nmses 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 incon- 

 sistent 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 



Art of Criticism. 



