AND IMAGINATION. 



465 



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 t 



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 gain?, 



What is it but rank poison in your veins 1 



There is no subject that has been more frequently made choice of by dra- 

 matic vi^riters 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 terror ; and particularly of thai incident in a plot which by the Greeks 

 was termed anagnorisis, or the discovery of a person to be different from 

 what he was taken to be. Yet, as a whole, there has always appeared to me 

 to be far more genius in the conduct of the fable than there is of real taste or 

 beauty. The story is, in few words, as follows : — An innocent person, and, 

 in the main, of a virtuous character, through no crime of himself or of 

 others, but by mere fatality and blind chance, is involved in the severest train 

 of all human miseries. In a casual rencounter he kills his father, without 

 knowing him; he afterward, with equal ignorance, marries his own mother; 

 and at length, discovering that he had committed both parricide and incest, 

 he becomes frantic, and dies in the utmost misery. Such a subject excites 

 horror rather than pity. As conducted by Sophocles, it is, indeed, extremely 

 affecting, but it conveys no instruction; it awakens in the mind no tender 

 sympathy ; it leaves no impression favourable to virtue or humanity.* It is 

 without the moral for which tragedy was invented. 



Genius, then, may exist without taste ; in like manner, taste may exist 

 without genius. Of this we meet with a thousand instances every day of our 

 lives. How countless are the numbers that are perpetually poring over the 

 elegant and picturesque poems of Lord Byron and Mr. (now Sir) Walter 

 Scott; or that are perpetually hurrying to Mr. West's impressive picture of 

 the " Healing the Sick in the Temple ;" or that of " Christ Rejected ;" enter- 

 ing with the nicest feelings into the various groupings, characters, and scenery 

 which are so exquisitely presented to them ; and who, nevertheless, though 

 endowed with a taste that enables them to relish such excellences, have no 

 genius whatever that could either invent or copy them. In like manner, I 

 have occasionally met with men, who for strength of feeling and elegance of 

 taste are almost unrivalled, and whom the world has long regarded, and justly 

 so, as among the finest critics of the present day on subjects of polite litera- 

 ture ; yet, notwithstanding' such possession of exquisite and acknowledged 

 taste, who have never been successful in the exercise of genius, and have 

 uniformly failed in poetry and original fiction. It is rarely that taste and 

 genius do not coexist in the same mind ; but it is also rarely that they co- 

 exist in an equal degree. Ariosto and Shakspeare excel in genius ; Tasso 

 and Racine in taste. Mr. Windham had as much genius as Mr. Burke ; his 

 imagination was as vivacious and rapid, his combination of congruous ideas 

 as instantaneous, his wit, perhaps, even more ready and brilliant — but Mr. 

 Burke was vastly his superior on the score of taste. 



Taste and genius cannot but be favourable to virtue. They cannot exist 

 conjointly without sensibility. While it is of the very essence of vice to have 

 its feelings blunted, its conscience seared, their pleasures are notoriously 

 derived from elevated and virtuous sources. There may, perhaps, be a few 

 exceptions to the remark, but I am speaking of the general principle. The 

 lovely, the graceful, the elegant, the novel, the wonderful, the sublime — these 

 are the food on which they banquet ; the grandeur and magnificence of the 

 heavens — the terrible majesty of the tempestuous ocean — the romantic wild« 

 ness of forests, and precipices, and mountains that lose themselves in the 



♦ See Blair's Lectures, vol. ill. eect. xlvl. 

 Gg 



