This often arises from what the Italians call the _gusto grande_ in these arts, which is what we call the sublime in writing.
In the next place, our critics do not seem sensible that there is more beauty in the works of a great genius, who is ignorant of the rules of art, than in those of a little genius who knows and observes them.

It is of those men of genius that Terrence speaks in opposition to the little artificial cavillers of his time: "Quorum aemulari expotat negligentiam Potius quam istorum obscuram diligentiam." AND.PROL.

20.
"Whose negligence he would rather imitate, than these men's obscure diligence." A critic may have the same consolation in the ill success of his play as Dr.South tells us a physician has at the death of a patient, that he was killed _secundum artem_.

Our inimitable Shakespeare is a stumbling-block to the whole tribe of these rigid critics.

Who would not rather read one of his plays, where there is not a single rule of the stage observed, than any production of a modern critic where there is not one of them violated![A] Shakespeare was indeed born with all the seeds of poetry, and may be compared to the stone in Pyrrhus's ring, which, as Pliny tells us, had the figure of Apollo and the nine Muses in the veins of it, produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature without any help from art.
[Footnote A: With all his fondness for classic models, Addison breaks away from conventionality of form in this essay, and pays his tribute to the genius of Shakespeare.