And all that thou hast done for me!

Sir Joshua Reynolds, in endeavouring to show that there is no such thing
as proper originality, a spirit emanating from the mind of the artist
and shining through his works, has traced Raphael through a number of
figures which he has borrowed from Masaccio and others. This is a bad
calculation. If Raphael had only borrowed those figures from others,
would he, even in Sir Joshua's sense, have been entitled to the praise
of originality? Plagiarism, in so far as it is plagiarism, is not
originality. Salvator is considered by many as a great genius. He is
what they call an irregular genius. My notion of genius is not exactly
the same as theirs. It has also been made a question; whether there is
not more genius in Rembrandt's Three Trees than in all Claude Lorraine's
landscapes. I do not know how that may be; but it was enough for Claude
to have been a perfect landscape-painter.

Capacity is not the same thing as genius. Capacity may be described to
relate to the quantity of knowledge, however acquired; genius, to its
quality and the mode of acquiring it. Capacity is power over given
ideas combinations of ideas; genius is the power over those which are
not given, and for which no obvious or precise rule can be laid down.
Or capacity is power of any sort; genius is power of a different sort
from what has yet been shown. A retentive memory, a clear
understanding, is capacity, but it is not genius. The admirable
Crichton was a person of prodigious capacity; but there is no proof
(that I know) that he had an atom of genius. His verses that remain are
dull and sterile. He could learn all that was known of any subject; he
could do anything if others could show him the way to do it. This was
very wonderful; but that is all you can say of it. It requires a good
capacity to play well at chess; but, after all, it is a game of skill,