Genius, Learning, and understanding the Nation

Young’s Conjectures had me thinking back to the St. Clair chapter on the legal wrangling over perpetual copyright. The English legal system was based upon Common Law, and the recovery of legal precedents, in order to maintain continuity in the legal structure of the English nation. One can find a similar notion in Burke’s later writings, in particular the Reflections on the Revolution in France. In that essay, he admonishes British (mostly English, actually) not to overthrow the government, because the continuity of the English legal constitution needed to be preserved in order to maintain the continuity of nation. He cites the resolutions made in 1689 as legal precedents, contending that those decisions have perpetual jurisdiction over succeeding generations. Scholars sometimes remark that Burke’s conservatism in the 1790s is at odds with his earlier writings, in which he writes for reconciliation with the American colonies and for Irish emancipation; however, it would seem to me that his emphasis on maintaining the present shape and structure of the English/British nation would cause him to want to keep the North American colonies at all cost, since they are already an acknowledged part of the empire. (Although, if he were alive in the early seventeenth century, he might oppose the founding of the American colonies in the first place, as imperial expansion threatens to distend and fragment the shape of the English commonwealth.) Burke’s emphasis on continuity places a nationalist preference for English constitution, even as it discourages revolution or expansion.

Young’s Conjectures discusses the qualities of Original Genius and Learning, allowing merits for both, but elevating the former. Learning is less impressive in that it requires constant retrospection, an accumulation of previous knowledge that forces the learned artist to Imitate, rather than create. If one were to look for Original Genius in the composition of legal decisions, one would probably locate it in the legal reasoning of the Scottish Supreme Court, which abolished perpetual copyright so that books could be made cheaper and there would be an expansion of literacy and commerce. The court didn’t look backward, at the precedents already made, but forward, at the possibilities of what might be.

This outward-and-forward-looking perspective speaks of national ambition, and similarly, Young’s essay contains a lot of nationalist rhetoric: “Bacon, Newton, Shakespeare, Milton, have showed us, that all the winds cannot blow the British flag further, than an Original spirit can convey the British fame.” The expansive imagination required for Original Genius is also described in imperial terms: “Genius may wander wild; there it has a creative power, and may reign arbitrarily over its own empire of Chimeras.” Original Genius appears imperialistic in its ability to create new chimeras, and indeed, reshape the images of the wild into its own vision.

At the same time, Young warns against the acquisition of new knowledge that is inevitable in imperial expansion: “If there is a famine of Invention in the land, like Josepha’s brethren, we must travel for food; we must visit the remote, and rich, Antients; but an inventive Genius may safely stay at home; that, like the Widow’s cruse, is divinely replenished from within; and affords us a miraculous delight.” The continual return to the same (and hence traditional) source for Original Genius suggests a continual return to the same documents and institutions for formulations of the nation and the state, a source of national continuity and vitality.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, behind Young’s discussion of Learning and Genius in the composition of poetry, lurks a discussion of different types of knowledge—do we derive our ideas from previous scholarship, or from original intuition, and empirical evidence derived from a direct interaction with Nature? The implications of this debate reach much farther than the rules of literary composition, as Young’s essay reveals a tension between different understandings of the nation and its purpose.