had been traced, they inferred that what was done by some men, under the influence of fundamental laws which regulate the march of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others, who, in the same circumstances, apply themselves to the same study.  But these metaphysicians resemble anatomists, under whose knife all men are alike.  They know the structure of the bones, the movement of the muscles, and where the connecting ligaments lie! but the invisible principle of life flies from their touch.  It is the practitioner on the living body who studies in every individual that peculiarity of constitution which forms the idiosyncrasy.

Under the influence of such novel theories of genius, JOHNSON defined it as “A Mind of large general powers ACCIDENTALLY determined by some particular direction.”  On this principle we must infer that the reasoning LOCKE, or the arithmetical DE MOIVRE, could have been the musical and fairy SPENSER.[A] This conception of the nature of genius became prevalent.  It induced the philosophical BECCARIA to assert that every individual had an equal degree of genius for poetry and eloquence; it runs through the philosophy of the elegant Dugald Stewart; and REYNOLDS, the pupil of Johnson in literature, adopting the paradox, constructed his automatic system on this principle of equal aptitude.  He says, “this excellence, however expressed by genius, taste, or the gift of Heaven, I am confident may be acquired.”  Reynolds had the modesty to fancy that so many rivals, unendowed by nature, might have equalled the magic of his own pencil:  but his theory of industry, so essential to genius, yet so useless without it, too long stimulated the drudges of art, and left us without a Correggio or a Raphael!  Another man of genius caught the fever of the new system.  CURRIE, in his eloquent “Life of Burns,” swells out the scene of genius to a startling magnificence; for he asserts that, “the talents necessary to the construction of an ‘Iliad,’ under different discipline and application, might have led armies to victory or kingdoms to prosperity; might have wielded the thunder of eloquence, or discovered and enlarged the sciences.”  All this we find in the text; but in the clear intellect of this man of genius a vast number of intervening difficulties started up, and in a copious note the numerous exceptions show that the assumed theory requires no other refutation than what the theorist has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied.  There is something ludicrous in the result of a theory of genius which would place HOBBES and ERASMUS, those timid and learned recluses, to open a campaign with the military invention and physical intrepidity of a Marlborough; or conclude that the romantic bard of the “Fairy Queen,” amidst the quickly-shifting scenes of his visionary reveries, could have deduced, by slow and patient watchings of the mind, the system and the demonstrations of Newton.