3. Imitation and Originality. The literary criticism
of the sixteenth century knew of no breach between
originality and imitation. On the contrary, Marco
Girolamo Vida's dictum (1527) that the highest origin-
ality was the most ingenious imitation of the ancients,
quoted here in lieu of many others, had a long life
and also reverberated for a long time in the theory
of art. An Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian theory
of imitation informed both literary criticism and art
theory, and to a certain extent even artistic practice
(Wittkower, 1965). It was only in the course of the
eighteenth century that some great artists differenti-
ated between copying and imitating (Anton Raphael
Mengs) or copying and borrowing (Sir Joshua Rey-
nolds). Borrowing from great masters was, according
to Reynolds, “the true and only method by which an
artist makes himself master of the profession.... Such
imitation is so far from... the servility of plagiarism,
that it is... a continual invention.” Horace Walpole,
in the Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762), val-
iantly rose in defense of the great painter concluding:
“... a quotation from a great author, with a novel
application of the sense, has always been allowed to
be an instance of parts and taste; and may have more
merit than the original.” But in the last decades of the
eighteenth century this meant defending a lost position.
A growing number of artists were in revolt. Their
criticism is epitomized in Chardin's Singe peintre
(Louvre) showing an ape who copies an antique statue
which on his canvas also turns into an ape. Hogarth,
in his famous tailpiece of the Spring Gardens Catalogue
of 1761, used the same simian formula to ridicule the
antiquarian adulation of masters of past ages.
Many artists were clamoring for a new kind of
originality, a search for new values independent of
imitation. But it was literary critics rather than artists
who defined the changed meaning of originality. The
primary contribution came from England, perhaps
influenced by Giordano Bruno's Eroici furori, published
in London in 1585 and dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney.
Bruno had a clear notion of the character of genius:
“The rules are derived from the poetry, and there are
as many kinds and sorts of true rules as there are kinds
and sorts of true poets.” Such a premiss opened up
the problem posed by Shakespeare's work: obviously,
it could not be fitted into the traditional Aristotelian
categories, and the modern alliance of originality and
genius was probably due to Shakespearean criticism.
Alexander Pope in the preface to his edition of Shakes
peare (1715) noted: “If ever any Author deserved the
name of an Original it was Shakespeare....” Charac-
teristically, “original” and “original genius” appear in
titles of books after 1750 (Edward Young, 1759;
William Duff, 1767; Robert Wood, 1769, 1775).
In one of his famous Spectator articles on Genius
(No. 160, 3 September, 1711), Addison still regarded
his subject as “so uncommon.” It was only after the
mid-century that a vigorous analysis of “genius” was
undertaken. Next to Alexander Gerard's, the most re-
markable of the many publications was Edward
Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (1759),
in which the aged author intended to show genius the
way out of the obstructions of Augustan dogma: the
“meddling ape imitation... destroys all mental indi-
viduality” was the new creed. The little book contains
such well-known and often quoted passages as “An
Original may be said to be of a vegetable nature; it
rises spontaneously from the vital root of genius; it
grows, it is not made.” What has been called Young's
“vegetable concept of genius” (Abrams, 1953) has been
looked upon askance by some modern critics (Fabian,
1966), because the links to sub-rational processes
turned genius into an occult phenomenon. But Young's
compelling language and metaphors assured his suc-
cess. The book was immediately translated twice into
German and created—as Herder wrote—an electrify-
ing effect. Young actually adumbrated the notions of
the romantic concept of genius. In his claims of origi-
nality Young had gone far beyond Duff, the author of
An Essay on Original Genius (1767), who, despite his
adulation of originality and exorcism of imitation,
demanded that an exuberant imagination must be re-
strained by a proportionate share of reason and
judgment—herein apparently following Gerard's An
Essay on Genius, a work largely written in 1758, but
not published until 1774 (Fabian, 1966). Already in his
An Essay on Taste (1759) Gerard had made the point
that “Diligence and acquired abilities may assist or
improve genius: but a fine imagination alone can pro-
duce it.”
At the end of the century the radical dedication to
original creation found eloquent apostles in John
Pinkerton and William Blake; in their revolt against
imitation both used violent language unheard before.
In his Letters of Literature (1785) Pinkerton attacked
“the complete folly of instituting Academies of Paint-
ing... that is, Schools of Imitation. Did ever any one
good painter arise from an academy? Never....” And
Blake in his utter condemnation of Reynolds' Dis-
courses exclaimed “What has Reasoning to do with the
Art of Painting?” His dictum “One power alone makes
a poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision” contains the
gist of his view of genius (Keynes, p. 770).
