In this investigation,
I could not, I thought, do better than keep before me the earliest
work of the greatest genius that perhaps human nature has yet produced,
our myriad-minded Shakespeare. I mean the _Venus and Adonis_, and the
_Lucrece_; works which give at once strong promises of the strength,
and yet obvious proofs of the immaturity, of his genius. From these
I abstracted the following marks, as characteristics of original poetic
genius in general.
I. In the _Venus and Adonis_ the first and obvious excellence is the
perfect sweetness of the versification, its adaptation to the subject,
and the power displayed in varying the march of the words without
passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was demanded by
the thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of preserving a sense of
melody predominant. The delight in richness and sweetness of sound,
even to a faulty excess, if it be evidently original, and not the
result of an easily imitable mechanism, I regard as a highly favourable
promise in the compositions of a young man.
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