5. Genius without Learning. While Renaissance and
post-Renaissance theory could not envisage great
achievement without the control of the reasoning
faculties and without solid intellectual grounding, those
who shaped the new concept of genius created a thor-
oughly anti-intellectual image of the select few: they
were deemed capable of producing from pure inspira-
tion. Sir William Temple had already suggested that
learning might weaken the force of genius (Of Poetry,
1690). And Addison made the memorable remark
(Spectator, No. 160, 3 September, 1711) that genius
creates “by the mere Strength of natural Parts and
without any Assistance of Arts or learning.” By the
mid-century this idea must have been current to such
extent that Dr. Johnson denounced as “the mental
diseases of the present Generation... Impatience of
Study, Contempt of the great Masters of antient [sic]
Wisdom, and a Disposition to rely wholly upon unas-
sisted Genius...” (The Rambler, No. 154, 7 Septem-
ber, 1751). Literary evidence of this concept abounds
in the second half of the century; witness such remarks
as the following by George Colman (1761-62): “The
Genius... needs neither diligence nor assiduity”; or
Young (1759), “Many a Genius, probably, there has
been, which could neither write, nor read”; “To the
neglect of learning, genius sometimes owes its greatest
glory.” And on to Schiller, Coleridge, and Nietzsche.
It was only natural that primitivism now appeared
as an asset favoring original genius. Adam Ferguson
had expressed the idea quite simply in An Essay on
the History of Civil Society (1767, p. 265): a primitive
poet is always original because “he delivers the emo-
tions of the heart, in words suggested by the heart:
for he knows no other.” And in the same year William
Duff made the more daring assertion that “original
genius will in general be displayed in its utmost vigour
in the early and uncultivated periods of society...
and that it will seldom appear in a very high degree
in cultivated life.”
It must be emphasized, however, that most practic-
ing artists were rather conservative. Few accepted the
extravagant claims made by literary critics for natural
genius. Sir Joshua Reynolds, for instance, condemned
the opinion “too prevalent among artists, of the imagi-
nary powers of native genius, and its sufficiency in
great works.” Despite his classic-idealistic convictions,
he was not unmoved by the new ideas, but opposed
the notion that “rules are the fetters of genius. They
are fetters to men without genius.” An insistence on
freedom tempered, however, by study, learning, and
imitation prevailed with other great practitioners.
Robert Adam, who almost monopolized important
architectural commissions in England between 1760
and 1790, held that the freedom permissible to genius
gave him liberty “to transform the beautiful spirit of
antiquity with novelty and variety.” But at the same
time he maintained that architecture needed “to be
informed and improved by correct taste,” and the
models of correct taste were the works of the ancients
(
Works, 1773). Adam's Roman friend, the great Gio-
vanni Battista Piranesi, in his
Parere su l'architettura
(1765) ridiculed reason and rule and advocated imagi-
native instead of imitative art. But despite this stress
put on originality, he admonished his readers: “Let us
borrow from their stock” (i.e., that of the ancients).
Even Goya, the greatest genius of Blake's generation
and, like Blake, an advocate of unfettered imagination,
intended to inscribe on the title page to his series of
Caprichos: “The sleep of reason produces monsters.”
In his comment to this plate Goya added: “Imagination
deserted by reason produces impossible monsters.
United with reason, imagination is the mother of the
arts and the source of their wonders.”
