250 ca.: Now as regards the manifestations of the sublime in literature, . . . it is fitting to observe at once that, though writers of this magnitude are far removed from faultlessness, they none the less all rise above what is mortal; that all other qualities prove their possessors to be men, but sublimity raises them near the majesty of God; and that while immunity from errors relieves from censure, it is grandeur that excites admiration. What need to add thereto that each of these supreme authors often redeems all his failures by a single sublime and happy touch, and (most important of all) that if one were to pick out and mass together the blunders of Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and all the rest of the greatest writers, they would be found to be a very small part, nay an infinitesimal fraction, of the triumphs which those heroes achieve on every hand. Longinus, On the Sublime, pp. 135 and 137.

250 ca.: Is it not worth while, on this very point, to raise the general question whether we ought to give the preference, in poems and prose writings, to grandeur with some attendant faults, or to success which is moderate but altogether sound and free from error? Aye, and further, whether a great number of excellences, or excellences higher in quality, would in literature rightly bear away the palm?. . . . For my part, I am well aware that lofty genius is far removed from flawlessness; for invariable accuracy incurs the risk of pettiness, and in the sublime, as in great fortunes, there must be something which is overlooked. It may be necessarily the case that low and average natures remain as a rule free from failing and in great safety because they never run a risk or seek to scale the heights, while great endowments prove insecure because of their very greatness. . . . I have myself noted not a few errors on the part of Homer and other writers of the greatest distinction and, the slips they have made afford me anything but pleasure. Still I do not term them wilful errors, but rather oversights of a random and casual kind, due to neglect and introduced with all the heedlessness of genius. Consequently I do not waver in my view that excellences higher in quality, even if not sustained throughout, should always on a comparison be voted the first place, because of their sheer elevation of spirit if for no other reason, Again: does Eratosthenes in the Erigone (a little poem which is altogether free from flaw) show himself a greater poet than Archilochus with the rich and disorderly abundance which follows in his train and with that outburst of the divine spirit within him which it is difficult to bring under the rules of law?

Longinus, On the Sublime, pp. 127 and 129. Conjectures (p. 64): Who knows if Shakespeare might not have thought less if he had read more? Who knows if he might not have labored under the load of Jonson's learning, as Enceladus under Aetna? His mighty genius, indeed, through the most mountainous oppression would have breathed out some of his inextinguishable fire; yet, possibly, he might not have risen up into that giant, that much more than common man, at which we now gaze with amazement and delight.

...

1754: When all our hopes and fears are confined within this narrow scene, what demi-gods does it make our superiors, who can bestow what we most value! We tremble before them. Young, Vol. II, 1 p. 475.

1711: Among great geniuses those few draw the admiration of all the world upon them and stand as the prodigies of mankind who by mere strength of natural parts and

Addison, Spectator, No. 160.

without any assistance of art or learning have produced works that were the delight of their own times, and the wonder of posterity. Conjectures (p. 64): Shakespeare was master of two books, unknown to many of the profoundly read, though books, which the last conflagration alone can destroy; the books of nature and that of man. These he had by heart, and has transcribed many admirable pages of them into his immortal works. These are the fountain-head whence

the Castalian streams of original composition flow;

1756: Wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but nature and passion are eternal. Joseph Warton, Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, p. 330. 1753: The natural is as strong an evidence of true genius as the sublime.

The Adventurer, No. 80.

Young, Vol. I, p. 152.

1742-45: Sprinkled with dews from the Castalian font. 1667: To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation; he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. Dryden, An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, pp. 79 f. Conjectures (p. 65): As what comes from the writer's heart reaches ours; so what comes from his head, sets our brains at work, and our hearts at

ease.

1754: If the Fairy Queen be destitute of that arrangement and economy which epic severity requires, yet we scarcely regret the loss of these, while their place is so amply supplied by something which more powerfully attracts us: something which engages the affections, the feelings of the heart, rather than the cold approbation of the head. Thomas Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen, Vol. I, p. 23.

Conjectures (p. 66): As his celebrated Cato, few tears are shed, but Cato's own; which, indeed, are truly great, but uneffecting, except to the noble few, who love their country better than themselves.

1726: When no distinction, where distinction's due,

Marks from the many the superior few.

Dodington, Young's Works, Vol. II, p. 77.

1685:... The private diversion of those happy few whom he used to charm with his company and honor with his friendship.

Robert Wolesley, Preface to Valentinian, ed. Spingarn, Vol. III, p. 25. Conjectures (p. 67 f.): That is, where art has taken great pains to labor undramatic matter into dramatic life; which is impossible. However, as it is, like Pygmalion, we cannot but fall in love with it, and wish it was alive. How would a Shakespeare or an Otway have answered our

wishes? They would have outdone Prometheus, and, with their heavenly fire, have given him not only life, but immortality.

1754: His paintings have beauties unborrowed from the pencil; and his statues in his eyes appear, like Pygmalion's, to live; though mere marble in theirs. His allanimating joy within gives graces to art and smiles to nature, invisible to common eyes. Young, Vol. II, p. 460.

1753: The flame of his genius in other parts, though somewhat dimmed by time, is not totally eclipsed. The Adventurer, No. 58.

1742-45: I'll try if I can pluck thee from thy rock, Prometheus! from this barren ball of earth:

If reason can unchain thee, thou art free.

1742-45: Come, my Prometheus, from thy pointed rock Of false ambition, if unclaimed, we'll mount; We'll innocently steal celestial fire.

And kindle our devotion at the stars;

A theft that shall not chain, but set thee free.

1742-45: Speech ventilates our intellectual fire.

Young, Vol. I, p. 162.

Young, Vol. I, p. 200.

Young, Vol. I, p. 25.

1685: True genius, like the anima mundi which some of the ancients believed will enter into the hardest and driest thing, enrich the most barren soil, and inform the meanest and most uncomely matter; nothing within the vast immensity of nature is so devoid of grace or so remote from sense but will obey the formings of his plastic heat and feel the operations of his vivifying power, which, when it pleases, can enliven the deadest lump, beautify the vilest dirt, and sweeten the most offensive filth; this is a spirit that blows where it lists, and like the philosopher's stone converts into itself whatsoever it touches. Nay, the baser, the emptier, the obscurer, the fouler, and less susceptible of ornament the subject appears to be, the more is the poet's praise who can infuse dignity and breathe beauty upon it, who can hide all the natural deformities in the fashion of his dress, supply all the wants with his own plenty, and by a poetical daemonianism possess it with the spirit of good sense and gracefulness, or who, as Horace says of Homer, can fetch light out of smoke, roses out of dunghills, and give a kind of life to the inanimate, by the force of that divine and supernatural virtue which, if we will believe Ovid, is the gift of all who are truly poets:

Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo,

Sedibus aetheriis spiritus ille venit.

Robert Wolesley, Preface to Valentinian, ed. Spingarn, Vol. III, p. 16. Conjectures (p. 68): To close our thoughts on Cato: he who sees not much beauty in it, has no taste for poetry; he who sees nothing else, has no taste for the stage. While it justifies censure, it extorts applause. It is much to be admired, but little to be felt.

1756: A stroke of nature is, in my opinion, worth a hundred such thoughts as, "When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,

The post of honor is a private station."

Cato is a fine dialogue on liberty, and the love of one's country; but considered

as a dramatic performance, nay, as a model of a just tragedy, as some have affectually represented it, it must be owned to want action and pathos; the two hinges, I presume, on which a just tragedy ought necessarily to turn, and without it cannot subsist. Joseph Warton, Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, p. 257. 1685: For as nothing is more disagreeable either in verse or prose than a slovenly looseness of style, so on the other hand too nice a correctness will be apt to deaden the life, and make the piece too stiff.

Robert Wolesley, Preface to Valentinian, ed. Spingarn, Vol. III, p. 8. Conjectures (p. 68 f.): Swift is a singular wit, Pope a correct poet, Addison a great author.

1756: Pope owed much to Walsh: it was he who gave him a very important piece of advice in his early youth; for he used to tell our author, that there was one way still left open for him, by which he might excel any of his predecessors, which was, by correctness; that though, indeed, we had several great poets, we as yet could boast of none that were perfectly correct, and that, therefore, he advised him to make this quality his particular study.

Joseph Warton, Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, p. 195. Conjectures (p. 73): A truth which in such an age of authors should not be forgotten.

1753: The present age, if we consider chiefly the state of our own country, may be styled with great propriety the Age of Authors; for, perhaps, there never was a time in which men of all degrees of ability, of every kind of education,of every profession and employment, were posting with ardor so general to the press.

The Adventurer, No. 115.

APPENDIX II

THE "CONJECTURES" COMPARED WITH THEIR PARALLELS IN SUBSEQUENT GERMAN LITERATURE

Under this heading the reader will find many passages from Young's Conjectures collated with a number of striking later parallels in German literature. Those German passages whose indebtedness to the Conjectures can be definitely established, as well as those which can be proved to have come from other sources, are discussed in Chapter IV. Those, finally, which can not be traced to the Conjectures or to other sources are here given. They are arranged in a chronological order after the passages to which they bear resemblance. While the origin of this third category remains a matter of speculation, the following compilation is offered to give at least a convenient survey of the circumstances in question.

Conjectures (p. 64): Consider, in those ancients, what is it the world admires? Not the fewness of their faults, but the number and brightness of their beauties; and if Shakespeare is their equal (as he doubtless is) in that which in them is admired, then is Shakespeare as great as they; a giant loses nothing of his size though he should chance to trip in his race.

1759 Die Güte eines Werkes beruht nicht auf einzelnen Schönheiten; diese einzelnen Schönheiten müssen ein schönes Ganzes ausmachen, oder der Kenner kann sie nicht anders als mit einem zürnenden Miszvergnügen lesen. Nur wenn das Ganze untadelhaft befunden wird, musz der Kunstrichter von einer nachteiligen Zergliederung abstehen und das Werk so, wie der Philosoph die Welt, betrachten.

Lessing, Vol. VIII, p. 39.

1761: Es ist garnicht die Rede, ob ein Meisterstück Fehler habe, sondern wo die Fehler liegen und wie sie angebracht sind. Jeder vernünftige Autor weiss seine Fehler zum voraus, er weiss ihnen aber die rechte Stelle zu geben, wo sie wie der Schatten im Gemälde sich verlieren und abstechen. Hamann, Vol. III, p. 97.

1768: Dieses Stück ist ohnstreitig eines von unsern beträchtlichsten Schönheiten, die genugsam zeigen, dass die Fehler, mit welchen sie verwebt sind, zu vermeiden im geringsten nicht über die Kräfte des Dichters gewesen wäre, wenn er sich diese Kräfte nur selbst hätte zutrauen wollen. Lessing, Vol. X, p. 95.

Coniectures (p. 48): Must we then, you say, not imitate ancient authors? Imitate them, by all means; but imitate aright. He that imitates the divine Illiad does not imitate Homer, but he that takes the same method which Homer took, for arriving at a capacity of accomplishing a work so great. Tread in his steps to the sole fountain of immortality: drink where he drank, at the true Helicon, that is, at the breast of nature.