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"It is enraptured by every striking form, it fills the soul with high enthusiasm, it sets the fancy on fire, it pushes it forward with impetuosity, renders all its conceptions glowing, and bestows a freedom and becoming negligence on its productions."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Author

An Essay on Genius

Place of Publication

London and Edinburgh

Publisher

Printed for W. Strahan, T.Cadell, and W. Creech

Date

1774

Metaphor

"It is enraptured by every striking form, it fills the soul with high enthusiasm, it sets the fancy on fire, it pushes it forward with impetuosity, renders all its conceptions glowing, and bestows a freedom and becoming negligence on its productions."

Metaphor in Context

Sensibility of taste, is necessary to its perfection; it makes a person feel strongly every beauty or blemish which he perceives. A lively imagination can never exist where sensibility of taste is wanting; or if it could, all that it produced would be frigid and spiritless; no object could make an impression sufficient to give it a brisk and active motion. A great degree of sensibility, if the other perfections of taste were wanting, joined with a fancy proportionably lively, would carry an artist into wildness and extravagance. But if the sensibility be not excessive, and if it be accompanied by the other perfections of taste, it will only raise vivacity of imagination to a proper pitch. It is enraptured by every striking form, it fills the soul with high enthusiasm, it sets the fancy on fire, it pushes it forward with impetuosity, renders all its conceptions glowing, and bestows a freedom and becoming negligence on its productions. When a taste of this construction exercises itself about what fancy is producing, it approves with so high a relish, or disapproves with so quick a disgust, as communicates new vivacity and force to the efforts of imagination. Great sensibility of taste contributed not a little to Giorgione's freedom of drawing, strength of colouring, and of relief; and to the boldness, rapidity, and even extravagance, which are remarked in Tintoret's manner.
(III.vi, pp. 406-7)