ion of
rules. These excellences were, heretofore, considered merely as the
effects of genius; and justly, if genius is not taken for inspiration,
but as the effect of close observation and experience.

He who first made any of these observations and digested them, so as to
form an invariable principle for himself to work by, had that merit; but
probably no one went very far at once; and generally the first who gave
the hint did not know how to pursue it steadily and methodically, at
least not in the beginning. He himself worked on it, and improved it;
others worked more, and improved farther, until the secret was
discovered, and the practice made as general as refined practice can be
made. How many more principles may be fixed and ascertained we cannot
tell; but as criticism is likely to go hand in hand with the art which is
its subject, we may venture to say that as that art shall advance, its
powers will be still more and more fixed by rules.

But by whatever strides criticism may gain ground, we need be under no
apprehension that invention will ever be annihilated or subdued, or
intellectual energy be brought entirely within the restraint of written
law. Genius will still have room enough to expatiate, and keep always
the same distance from narrow comprehension and mechanical performance.

What we now call genius begins, not where rules, abstractedly taken, end,
but where known vulgar and trite rules have no longer any place. It must
of necessity be that even works of genius, as well as every other effect,
as it must have its cause, must likewise have its rules; it cannot be by
chance that excellences are produced with any constancy, or any
certainty, for this is not the nature of chance, but the rules by which
men of extraordinary parts, and such as are called men of genius work,
are either such as they discover by their own peculiar observation, or of
such a nice texture as not easily to admit handling or expressing in
words, especially as artists are not very frequently skilful in that mode
of communicating ideas.

Unsubstantial, however, as these rules may seem, and difficult as it may
be to convey them in writing, they are still seen and felt in the mind of
the artist, and he works from them with as much certainty as if they were
embodied, as I may say, upon paper. It is true these refined principles
cannot be always made palpable, like the more gross rules of art; yet it
does not follow but that the mi