out a path to fame for themselves, and boldly cultivate untried
experiment." Goldsmith wrote these words in _The Bee_ in the same year in
which Young's _Conjectures_ was published. I feel tolerably certain that
he wrote them as a result of reading Young's work. The reaction against
traditionalism, however, was gathering general force by this time, and the
desire to be original was beginning to oust the desire to copy. Both
Young's and Goldsmith's essays are exceedingly interesting as
anticipations of the romantic movement. Young was a true romantic when he
wrote that Nature "brings us into the world all Originals--no two faces,
no two minds, are just alike; but all bear evident marks of separation on
them. Born Originals, how comes it to pass that we are Copies?" Genius, he
thinks, is commoner than is sometimes supposed, if we would make use of
it. His book is a plea for giving genius its head. He wants to see the
modern writer, instead of tilling an exhausted soil, staking out a claim
in the perfectly virgin field of his own experience. He cannot teach you
to be a man of genius; he could not even teach himself to be one. But at
least he lays down many of the right rules for the use of genius. His book
marks a most interesting stage in the development of English literary
criticism.

X.--GRAY AND COLLINS

There seems to be a definite connection between good writing and
indolence. The men whom we call stylists have, most of them, been idlers.
From Horace to Robert Louis Stevenson, nearly all have been pigs from the
sty of Epicurus. They have not, to use an excellent Anglo-Irish word,
"industered" like insects or millionaires. The greatest men, one must
admit, have mostly been as punctual at their labours as the sun--as fiery
and inexhaustible. But, then, one does not think of the greatest writers
as stylists. They are so much more than that. The style of Shakespeare is
infinitely more marvellous than the style of Gray. But one hardly thinks
of style in presence of the sea or a range of mountains or in reading
Shakespeare. His munificent and gorgeous genius was as far above style as
the statesmanship of Pericles or the sanctity of Joan of Arc was above
good manners. The world has not endorsed Ben Jonson's retort to those who
commended Shakespeare for never having "blotted out" a line: "Would he had
blotted out a thousand!" We feel that so vast a genius is beyond the
perfection of control we look for in a stylist.