Torrent Mensura Genius V6.iso
Kanisha Dezarn
This same comparison between the body politic and the body humanoccurs in the essay of 1719, and even the author's chief analogydrawn from musical harmony bears with it some of the flavor of anolder system of universal correspondences. His comparison of theforce of genius to the pull of gravity, however, evokes a newerpicture. Yet it is a picture no less orderly and one from whichthe preordained function of each individual could be just aslogically derived. And his rhapsodic praise of the infinitediversity of human temperaments is based on that favoritecomparison with natural scenery and that familiar canon ofneoclassical esthetics: ordered variety within unity, whether itbe in nature or in art.
The author of the pamphlet of 1719 introduces another refinementon the idea of an inborn bent or genius. A man is born not onlywith a peculiar aptitude for the vocation of writing, but with apeculiar aptitude for a particular style of writing. Some suchaptitude had presumably resulted in that individuality of style,that particular "character," which 17th-century Biblical criticswere busily searching out in each of the writers of Scripture.
Individuality or originality in the form or plan of a work ofart, however, was quite another thing, and praise of it far morerare. Yet there had always been protests against the impositionof a universal classical standard, and our author's insistencethat some few geniuses have the right to discard the "Rules ofArt" and all such "Leading-strings" follows a well-worn path ofreasoning. His scientific analogy, drawn from those naturalphilosophers who had cast off the yoke of Aristotle and all"other Mens Light," is one which had appeared at least as earlyas 1661 in Robert Boyle's Considerations Touching the Style ofHoly Scripture. It had been reiterated by Dryden and severalothers who refused to recognize an ipse dixit in letters anymore than in science.
It must be noted, however, that this rejection of authority for afew rare individuals in no way constitutes a rejection of reasonor conscious art. The genius has the right to cast off thefetters only after he has well studied them. Only in one instancedoes our author waver toward another conception. This is when hepauses to echo Rowe's preface to Shakespeare and Addison's famousSpectator no. 160. Then indeed he boasts that England has hadmany "Originals" who, "without the help of Learning, by the meerForce of natural Ability, have produc'd Works which were theDelight of their own Times, and have been the Wonder ofPosterity." But when he doubts whether learning would have helpedor "spoiled" them, it is hard to escape the conclusion that he isstill poised on the horns of the typical neoclassicalantithesis: that supposed enmity between reason, which wasgenerally thought to create the form of the poem, and theemotions and imagination, which were considered largelyresponsible for its style.
Another decade was to pass before John Husbands would demonstratea clear appreciation for the true simplicity of the Bible andpraise its "penmen" in terms close to those employed to describeoriginal genius.
The policy of the English government, the great influx of English settlers in the seventeenth century, and the irresistible flow of circumstances, have made us an English-speaking population; but at no time, from the days of Dowling to the present days, have there been wanting, wise and kind-hearted men, who, however they may have rejoiced that the English language, rich with the richest trophies of genius and of thought, was their's by inheritance, were anxious, not to supplant English or to extend the use of Irish, but to perpetuate the knowledge of the olderand the more venerable language, and to procure,p.vii
b9b4d2437c