ct, without waiting for the slower confirmation of the judgment.
Good sense is perhaps that confirmation, which establishes a suddenly
conceived idea, or feeling, by the powers of comparing and reflecting.
They differ also in this, that taste seems to have a more immediate
reference to arts, to literature, and to almost every object of the
senses; while good sense rises to moral excellence, and exerts its
influence on life and manners. Taste is fitted to the perception and
enjoyment of whatever is beautiful in art or nature: Good sense, to the
improvement of the conduct, and the regulation of the heart.

YET the term good sense, is used indiscriminately to express either a
finished taste for letters, or an invariable prudence in the affairs of
life. It is sometimes applied to the most moderate abilities, in which
case, the expression is certainly too strong; and at others to the
most shining, when it is as much too weak and inadequate. A sensible man
is the usual, but unappropriated phrase, for every degree in the scale
of understanding, from the sober mortal, who obtains it by his decent
demeanor and solid dullness, to him whose talents qualify him to rank
with a Bacon, a Harris, or a Johnson.

GENIUS is the power of invention and imitation. It is an incommunicable
faculty: no art or skill of the possessor can bestow the smallest
portion of it on another: no pains or labour can reach the summit of
perfection, where the seeds of it are wanting in the mind; yet it is
capable of infinite improvement where it actually exists, and is
attended with the highest capacity of communicating instruction, as well
as delight to others.

IT is the peculiar property of genius to strike out great or beautiful
things: it is the felicity of good sense not to do absurd ones. Genius
breaks out in splendid sentiments and elevated ideas; good sense
confines its more circumscribed, but perhaps more useful walk, within
the limits of prudence and propriety.

The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

THIS is perhaps the finest picture of human genius that ever was drawn
by a human pencil. It presents a living image of a creative imagination,
or a power of inventing things which have no actual existence.

WI