IV
In Britain, Barclay mentions a genius saeculi (“genius
of the age”) as early as 1614 (Tonelli, 1955).
The doctrine of originality and divine inspiration
especially for poetry is developed during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries (Thüme, 1927), but the term
“genius” is comparatively rarely used in this connec-
tion (Latin ingenium is frequently translated as “wit,”
but as such it does not include the idea of creativity).
Evelyn refers to Huygens as a “universal Mathematical
Genius” (Evelyn, 1662); Wolseley (1685) opposes
poetical genius to imitation and to laborious elabora-
tion. Temple (1690) refers genius to “Coelestial Fire
or Divine Inspiration,” superior to the constraint of
the rules. The doctrine of creative imagination and of
its superiority to the rules is especially developed in
Shakespearean criticism, e.g., by Rymer (Thüme, 1927).
During the eighteenth century British writers begin
to theorize about genius, and stress its irrational traits
more than elsewhere. For Shaftesbury, a genius is a
person who is able to create as nature does: and nature
is a revelation of the universal spirit. Therefore a genius
is considered as a second deity, or as a Prometheus.
Enthusiasm is a condition of creation; nevertheless, a
man of genius should not infringe the rules of art: he
needs knowledge and good sense, although he avoids
minuteness. Addison (1711) considers genius as founded
on active imagination, and contrasts it to imitation;
but there are two kinds of geniuses: the first, or the
natural kind (Homer, Shakespeare) create inde-
pendently of the rules; the second, or the learned kind
(Plato, Vergil, Bacon, Milton) have been educated and
developed through the rules. For Young (1759), genius
is divine inspiration; its creation is as spontaneous as
that of nature, and the rules are only a hindrance to
it. With Young, the interpretation of genius as a sort
of irrationality reaches its climax. Gerard (1759; 1774)
distinguishes genius from imagination: the second col-
lects new materials, the first orders them into a whole
according to judgment and to taste. The work of genius
is the original source of rules: it establishes them, but
is not constricted by them. Though genius, for Gerard,
does not act in a consciously rational way (but rather
by inspired enthusiasm), its psychological explanation,
through the theory of association of ideas, is completely
rational (Wolf, 1923; Thüme, 1927). Duff considers
genius as a proportion of different powers, such as
inventive imagination, judgment, and taste. In art, the
proper manifestation of genius is the sublime (Duff,
1767). For Ogilvie, genius or invention proceeds in
science by judgment or understanding, in poetry by
imagination; only poetical invention is original and,
metaphorically speaking, creative (Ogilvie, 1777).
