what is defective, in an object, 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 unappropriate phrase, for every degree in the scale of understanding, from the sober mortal, who obtains it by his decent demeanour and solid dulness, 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 ot 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.

With superficial judges who, it must be confessed, make up the greater part of the mass of mankind, talents are only liked or understood to a certain degree. Lofty ideas are above the reach of ordinary apprehensions: the vulgar allow those who possess them to be in a somewhat higher state of mind than themselves; but of the vast gulf which separates them, they have not the least conception. They acknowledge a superiority, but of its extent they neither know the value, nor can conceive the reality. It is true, the mind, as well the eye, can take in objects larger than itself; but this is only true of great minds; for a man of low capacity, who considers a consummate genius, resembles one who, seeing a column for the first time, and standing at too great a distance to take in the whole of it, concludes it to be flat: or, like one unacquainted with the first principles of philosophy, who, finding the sensible horizon appear a plain surface, can form no idea of the spherical form of the whole, which he does not see, and laughs at the account of antipodes, which he cannot comprehend.

Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Scene 1st.

Whatever is excellent is also rare; what is useful is more common. How many thousands are born qualified for the coarse employments of life, for one who is capable of excelling in the fine arts! yet so it ought to be, because our natural wants are more numerous, and more importunate, than the intellectual.

Whenever it happens that a man of distinguished talents has been drawn by mistake, or precipitated by passion, into any dangerous indiscretion, it is common for those whose coldness of temper has supplied the place and usurped the name of prudence, to boast of their own steadier virtue, and triumph in their own superior caution-only because they have never been assailed by a temptation strong enough to surprise them into error. And with what a visible appropriation of the character to themselves do they constantly conclude with a cordial compliment to common sense! They point out the beauty and usefulness of this quality so forcibly and explicitly, that you cannot possibly mistake whose picture they are drawing with so flattering a pencil. The unhappy man whose conduct has been so feelingly arraigned, perhaps acted from good, though mistaken motives; at least, from motives of which his censurer has not capacity to judge: but the event was unfavourable, nay, the action might be really wrong, and the vulgar maliciously take the opportunity of this single indiscretion, to lift themselves nearer on a level with a character which, except in this instance, has always thrown them at the most disgraceful and mortifying distance.

The elegant biographer of Collins, in his affecting apology for that unfortunate genius, remarks, "That the gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task on the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude, or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness, and of cool attention,

which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind; yet, difficult as nature herself seems to have rendered the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation of dulness and of folly to point with gothic triumph to those excesses which are the overflowing of faculties they never enjoyed.

What the greater part of the world mean by common sense, will be generally found, on a closer inquiry, to be art, fraud, or selfishness! That sort of saving prudence which makes men extremely attentive to their own safety, or profit; diligent in the pursuit of their own pleasures or interests; and perfectly at their ease as to what becomes of the rest of mankind: furies, where their own property is concerned; philosophers, when nothing but the good of others is at stake; and perfectly resigned under all calamities but their own.

When we see so many accomplished wits of the present age, as remarkable for the decorum of their lives as for the brilliancy of their writings, we may believe that, next to principle, it is owing to their good sense, which regulates and chastises their imaginations. The vast conceptions which enable a true genius to ascend the sublimest heights, may be so connected with the stronger passions, as to give it a natural tendency to fly off from the straight line of regularity; till good sense, acting on the fancy, makes it gravitate powerfully towards that virtue which is its proper centre.

Add to this, when it is considered with what imperfection the Divine wisdom has thought fit to stamp every thing human, it will be found that excellence and infirmity are so inseparably wound up in each other, that a man derives the soreness of temper, and irritability of nerve, which make him uneasy to others, and unhappy in himself, from

* Dr. John Langhorne's Biographical Memoir, prefixed to the Poetical Works of William Collins.

those exquisite feelings, and that elevated pitch of thought, by which, as the apostle expresses it on a more serious occasion, he is, as it were, out of the body.

It is not astonishing, therefore, when the spirit is carried away by the magnificence of its own ideas,

Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspired.

that the frail body, which is the natural victim of pain, disease, and death, should not always be able to follow the mind in its aspiring flights, but should be as imperfect as if it belonged only to an ordinary soul.

Besides, might not Providence intend to humble human pride, by presenting to our eyes so mortifying a view of the weakness and infirmity of even his best work? Perhaps man, who is already but a little lower than the angels, might, like the revolted spirits, totally have shaken off obedience and submission to his Creator, had not God wisely tempered human excellence with a certain consciousness of its own imperfection. But though this inevitable alloy of weakness may frequently be found in the best characters, yet how can that be the source of triumph and exaltation to any, which, if properly weighed, must be the deepest motive of humiliation to all? A good-natured man will be so far from rejoicing, that he will be secretly troubled whenever he reads that the greatest Roman moralist was tainted with avarice, and the greatest British philosopher with venality.*

It is remarked by Pope, in his Essay on Criticism, that,

Ten censure wrong, for one who writes amiss.

But I apprehend it does not therefore follow that to

* Seneca and Bacon.