Some laws fundamental and indispensable, and con venient. but not by his monstrous and improbable fictions, by his bizarre mixture of the serious and comic styles, by the want of coherence in his stories, or by the continual interruptions of his narration. He charms by the force and clearness of his expression, by the readiness and variety of his inventions, and by his natural pictures of the passions, especially those of the gay and amorous kind; and however his faults may diminish our satisfaction, they are not able entirely to destroy it. Did our pleasure really arise from those parts of his poem which we denominate faults, this would be no objection to criticism in general; it would only be an objection to those particular rules of criticism which would establish such circumstances to be faults, and would represent them as universally blameable. If they are found to please, they cannot be faults, let the pleasure which they produce be ever so unexpected and accountable. D. HUME, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (Of the Standard of Taste), 1741-1742. un Criticism has sometimes permitted fancy to dictate the laws by which fancy ought to be restrained, and fallacy to perplex the principles by which fallacy is to be detected; her superintendence of others has betrayed her to negligence of herself; and, like the ancient Scythians, by extending her conquests over distant regions, she has left her throne vacant to her slaves. Among the laws of which the desire of extending authority, or ardour of promoting knowledge, has prompted others useful the prescription, all which writers have received had not the same original right to our regard. Some are to be considered as fundamental and indispensable, others only as useful and convenient; some as dictated by reason and necessity, others as enacted by despotic antiquity; some as invincibly supported by their conformity to the order of nature and operations of the intellect; others as formed by accident, or instituted by example, and therefore always liable to dispute and alteration. nature from custom. It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to dis- Distinguish tinguish nature from custom; or that which is established because it is right, from that which is right only because it is established; that he may neither violate essential principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties within his view, by a needless fear of Rules which breaking rules which no literary dictator had authority dictator had to enact. S. JOHNSON, The Rambler (No. 156), 1751. nature. I do not, however, think it safe to judge of works genius merely by the event (see p. 271). of no literary authority to enact. Appeal open cism to from criti nature. Unsafe, how ever, to judge by the event. practice. S. JOHNSON, The Rambler (No. 156), 1751. The precepts of the art of poesy were posterior to Rules practice; the rules of the epopea were all drawn from the posterior to Iliad and the Odyssey; and of tragedy, from the Oedipus of Sophocles. A petulant rejection, and an implicit veneration, of the rules of the ancient critics are equally destructive of true taste. J. WARTON, Essay on Pope, 1756-1782. "befetished' passes." I'll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in Criticism the world, except to a connoisseur ;- . . the whole set with "rules of 'em are so hung round and befetish'd with the bobs and and comtrinkets of criticism,-or, to drop my metaphor, which bythe-by is a pity,—for I have fetch'd it as far as from the coast of Guinea,—their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the Devil at once than stand to be pricked and tortured to death by 'em. I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination Authority or reason? into his author's hands,-be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore. Great Apollo! if thou art in a giving humour,—give me-I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire along with it—and send Mercury, with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared, with my compliments to-no matter. L. STERNE, Tristram Shandy, 1760. Rude ages exhibit the triumph of authority over reason. [C]riticism. . . by what fatality I know not, continues to be no less slavish in its principles, nor less submissive to authority, than it was originally. Bossu, a celebrated French critic, gives many rules; but can discover no better foundation for any of them than the practice merely of Homer and Virgil, supported by the authority of Aristotle. Strange that in so long a work he should Whether and never once have stumbled upon the question, whether, and how far, do these rules agree with human nature? It with human could not surely be his opinion, that these poets, however eminent for genius, were entitled to give law to mankind; and that nothing now remains but blind obedience to their arbitrary will: if in writing they followed no rule, why should they be imitated? If they studied nature, and were obsequious to rational principles, why should these be concealed from us? how far the rules agree nature? Absurd to judge Ariosto or Spenser by precepts attend to. LORD KAMES, Elements of Criticism, 1762. We [It is absurd to think of judging either Ariosto or Spenser by precepts which they did not attend to. who live in the days of writing by rule, are apt to try every they did not composition by those laws which we have been taught to think the sole criterion of excellence. Critical taste is universally diffused, and we require the same order and design which every modern performance is expected to have, in poems where they never were regarded or intended. Spenser, and the same may be said of Ariosto, did not live in an age of planning. His poetry is the careless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sensibility. Rules not the sole criterion of excellence. ... Exactness in his poem, would have been like the cornice which a painter introduced in the grotto of Calypso. If the Fairy Queen be destitute of that arrangement and economy which epic severity requires, yet we scarcely regret the loss of these while their place is so amply supplied, by something which more powerfully attracts us; something which engages the affections, the feeling of the heart, rather than the cold approbation of the head. If there be any poem, whose graces please because they are situated Graces bebeyond the reach of art, and where the force and faculties yond the of creative imagination delight, because they are unassisted and unrestrained by those of deliberate judgment, it is this. In reading Spenser, if the critic is not satisfied, yet the reader is transported. T. WARTON, Observations on the Fairy Queen, 1754. reach of art. Genius is a master-workman, learning is but an instru- Genius or learning? ment; and an instrument, though most valuable, yet not always indispensable. . . . Have not some, though not famed for erudition, so written, as almost to persuade us that they shone brighter and soared higher for escaping the boasted aid of that proud ally? temns rules. Nor is it strange; for what, for the most part, mean we Genius conby genius, but the power of accomplishing great things without the means generally reputed necessary to that end? ... Learning a lover of rules. Learning... is fond and proud of what has cost it much pains; is a great lover of rules and boaster of famed examples. As beauties less perfect, who owe half their charms to cautious art, learning inveighs against natural, unstudied graces and small harmless inaccuracies, and sets rigid bounds to that liberty to which genius often owes its Genius owes supreme glory, but the no-genius its frequent ruin. For glory to unprescribed beauties and unexampled excellence, which liberty. are characteristics of genius, lie without the pale of learning's authorities and laws; which pale genius must leap to come at them: but by that leap, if genius is wanting, we its supreme break our necks, we lose that little credit which possibly Sacer nobis inest Deus, says Seneca. With regard Genius can set us to the moral world, conscience-with regard to the in- I say "sometimes," because there is a genius which ... [S]uperstition for our predecessors set aside, the The classics. classics are for ever our rightful and revered masters in composition, and our understandings bow before them. When a master is wanted; which sometimes, Some are pupils of "Gothic" poetry has its own rules. But when? as I have shown, is not the case. nature only, nor go farther to school. E. YOUNG, Conjectures on Original Composition, 1759. When an architect examines a Gothic structure by Grecian rules, he finds nothing but deformity. But the Gothic architecture has its own rules, by which, when it comes to be examined, it is seen to have its merits as well as the Grecian. The question is not, which of the two is conducted in the simplest or truest taste, but whether there be not sense and design in both—when scrutinized by the laws on which each is projected. ther ag his, it the repr mry of an ich a nu pose. 1 The same observation holds of the two sorts of poetry. Judge of the Fairy Queen by the classic models, and you are shocked with its disorder: consider it with an eye to its Gothic original, and you find it regular. The unity and simplicity of the former are more complete; but the latter principle of has that sort of unity and simplicity which results from its "Gothic" has its own unity." nature. The Fairy Queen then, as a Gothic poem, derives its |