s, and contemplating their masters, they will judge from
consciousness less erroneously than from discussion; and in forming
comparative views and parallel situations, they will discover certain
habits and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves.

SYDENHAM has beautifully said, "Whoever describes a violet exactly as to
its colour, taste, smell, form, and other properties, will find the
description agree in most particulars with all the violets in the
universe."

[Footnote A: Few writers were so competent to instruct in art as Gesner,
who was not only an author and a poet, but an artist who decorated his
poems by designs as graceful as their subject.--ED.]

CHAPTER IV.

Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal
aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--Originates in
peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition of genius.--A
substitution for the white paper of Locke.[A]

[Footnote A: In the second edition of this work in 1818, I touched on some
points of this inquiry in the second chapter: I almost despaired to find
any philosopher sympathise with the subject, so invulnerable, they
imagine, are the entrenchments of their theories. I was agreeably
surprised to find these ideas taken up in the _Edinburgh Review_ for
August, 1820, in an entertaining article on Reynolds. I have, no doubt,
profited by the perusal, though this chapter was prepared before I met
with that spirited vindication of "an inherent difference in the organs or
faculties to receive impressions of any kind."]

That faculty in art which individualises the artist, belonging to him and
to no other, and which in a work forms that creative part whose likeness
is not found in any other work--is it inherent in the constitutional
dispositions of the Creator, or can it be formed by patient acquisition?

Astonished at their own silent and obscure progress, some have imagined
that they have formed their genius solely by their own studies; when they
generated, they conceived that they had acquired; and, losing the
distinction between nature and habit, with fatal temerity the idolatry of
philosophy substituted something visible and palpable, yet shaped by the
most opposite fancies, called a Theory, for Nature herself! Men of genius,
whose great occupation is to be conversant with the inspirations of
Nature, made up a factitious one among themselves, and assumed that they
could operate without