could
never rival the expression and anatomy of even the middling artists of the
Roman school.

Even among those rare and gifted minds which have startled us by the
versatility of their powers, whence do they derive the high character of
their genius? Their durable claims are substantiated by what is inherent
in themselves--what is individual--and not by that flexibility which may
include so much which others can equal. We rate them by their positive
originality, not by their variety of powers. When we think of YOUNG, it is
only of his "Night Thoughts," not of his tragedies, nor his poems, nor
even of his satires, which others have rivalled or excelled. Of AKENSIDE,
the solitary work of genius is his great poem; his numerous odes are not
of a higher order than those of other ode-writers. Had POPE only composed
odes and tragedies, the great philosophical poet, master of human life and
of perfect verse, had not left an undying name. TENIERS, unrivalled in the
walk of his genius, degraded history by the meanness of his conceptions.
Such instances abound, and demonstrate an important truth in the history
of genius that we cannot, however we may incline, enlarge the natural
extent of our genius, any more than we can "add a cubit to our stature."
We may force it into variations, but in multiplying mediocrity, or in
doing what others can do, we add nothing to genius.

So true is it that men of genius appear only to excel in a single art, or
even in a single department of art, that it is usual with men of taste to
resort to a particular artist for a particular object. Would you ornament
your house by interior decorations, to whom would you apply if you sought
the perfection of art, but to _different artists_, of very distinct
characters in their invention and their execution? For your arabesques you
would call in the artist whose delicacy of touch and playfulness of ideas
are not to be expected from the grandeur of the historical painter, or the
sweetness of the _Paysagiste_. Is it not evident that men of genius
_excel_ only in one department of their art, and that whatever they do
with the utmost original perfection, cannot be equally done by another man
of genius? He whose undeviating genius guards itself in its own true
sphere, has the greatest chance of encountering no rival. He is a Dante, a
Milton, a Michael Angelo, a Raphael: his hand will not labour on what the
Italians call _pasticcios_; and he remains not unimitated b