49. Ask not—Where is fancy bred? in the heart? in the head? how begot? how nourished?
Coroll.—The critic who inquires whether in the madness of Lear, grief for the loss of empire, or the resentment of filial ingratitude preponderated—and he who doubts whether it be within the limits of art to embody beings of fancy, agitate different questions, but of equal futility.
50. Genius may adopt, but never steals.
Coroll.—An adopted idea or figure in the works of genius will be a foil or a companion; but an idea of genius borrowed by mediocrity scorns the base alliance and crushes all its mean associates—it is the Cyclop's thumb, by which the pigmy measured his own littleness,—"or hangs like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief."
51. Genius, inspired by invention, rends the veil that separates existence from possibility; peeps into the dark, and catches a shape, a feature, or a colour, in the reflected ray.
52. Talent, though panting, pursues genius through the plains of invention, but stops short at the brink that separates the real from the possible. Virgil followed Homer in making Mezentius speak to Rhœbus, but shrank from the reply of the prophetic courser.[7]