his fight with Oliver. This assuredly did not lessen the merit of it.
Thus it ever is with the man of real genius. He has the feeling of
truth already shrined in his own breast, and his eye is still bent on
Nature to see how she expresses herself. When we thoroughly understand
the subject it is easy to translate from one language into another.
Raphael, in muffling up the figure of Elymas the Sorcerer in his
garments, appears to have extended the idea of blindness even to his
clothes. Was this design? Probably not; but merely the feeling of
analogy thoughtlessly suggesting this device, which being so suggested
was retained and carried on, because it flattered or fell in with the
original feeling. The tide of passion, when strong, overflows and
gradually insinuates itself into all nooks and corners of the mind.
Invention (of the best kind) I therefore do not think so distinct a
thing from feeling as some are apt to imagine. The springs of pure
feeling will rise and fill the moulds of fancy that are fit to receive
it. There are some striking coincidences of colour in well-composed
pictures, as in a straggling weed in the foreground streaked with blue
or red to answer to a blue or red drapery, to the tone of the flesh or
an opening in the sky:--not that this was intended, or done by the rule
(for then it would presently become affected and ridiculous), but the
eye, being imbued with a certain colour, repeats and varies it from a
natural sense of harmony, a secret craving and appetite for beauty,
which in the same manner soothes and gratifies the eye of taste, though
the cause is not understood. _Tact, finesse_, is nothing but the being
completely aware of the feeling belonging to certain situations,
passions, etc., and the being consequently sensible to their slightest
indications or movements in others. One of the most remarkable
instances of this sort of faculty is the following story, told of Lord
Shaftesbury, the grandfather of the author of the _Characteristics_. He
had been to dine with Lady Clarendon and her daughter, who was at that