e, and
to construct out of itself, and for the delight and admiration of the
world and posterity, that excellence of which the idea exists hitherto
only in its own breast, and the impression of which it would make as
universal as the eye of heaven, the benefit as common as the air we
breathe. The first impulse of genius is to create what never existed
before: the contemplation of that, which is so created, is sufficient to
satisfy the demands of taste; and it is the habitual study and imitation
of the original models that takes away the power, and even wish to do the
like. Taste limps after genius, and from copying the artificial models, we
lose sight of the living principle of nature. It is the effort we make,
and the impulse we acquire, in overcoming the first obstacles, that
projects us forward; it is the necessity for exertion that makes us
conscious of our strength; but this necessity and this impulse once
removed, the tide of fancy and enthusiasm, which is at first a running
stream, soon settles and crusts into the standing pool of dulness,
criticism, and _virtu_.

What also gave an unusual _impetus_ to the mind of man at this period, was
the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voyages and travels.
Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of
the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the
imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairy land was realized in new and
unknown worlds. "Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales, thrice
happy isles," were found floating "like those Hesperian gardens famed of
old," beyond Atlantic seas, as dropt from the zenith. The people, the
soil, the clime, every thing gave unlimited scope to the curiosity of the
traveller and reader. Other manners might be said to enlarge the bounds of
knowledge, and new mines of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is from a
voyage to the Straits of Magellan that Shakspeare has taken the hint of
Prospero's Enchanted Island, and of the savage Caliban with his god
Setebos.[123] Spenser seems to have had the same feeling in his mind in
the production of his Faery Queen, and vindicates his poetic fiction on
this very ground of analogy.

"Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign,
That all this famous antique history
Of some the abundance of an idle brain
Will judged be, and painted forgery,
Rather than matter of just memory:
Since none that breatheth living air, doth know
Whe