ABSTRACT
We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than understanding, that genius and taste are strictly reducible to rules. So far is it from being true that the finest breath of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest common sense is only what Mr Locke would have called a mixed mode, subject to a particular sort of acquired and indefinable tact. Reason is the interpreter and critic of nature and genius. He must be a poor creature indeed whose practical convictions do not in almost all cases outrun his deliberate understanding, or who does not feel and know much more than he can give a reason for. Common sense is the just result of the sum-total of such unconscious impressions in the ordinary occurrences of life, as they are treasured up in the memory, and called out by the occasion. Genius and taste depend much upon the same principle exercised on loftier ground and in more unusual combinations.
