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Unit 15: Hazlitt—On Genius and Common Sense...

once, by what appears a kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A man endowed with this Notes
faculty feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in his power, perhaps,
to give a reason for it; because he cannot recollect and bring before him all the materials
that gave birth to his opinion; for very many and very intricate considerations may
unite to form the principle, even of small and minute parts, involved in, or dependent
on, a great many things:—though these in process of time are forgotten, the right
impression still remains fixed in his mind.
‘This impression is the result of the accumulated experience of our whole life, and has
been collected, we do not always know how or when. But this mass of collective
observation, however acquired, ought to prevail over that reason, which, however
powerfully exerted on any particular occasion, will probably comprehend but a partial
view of the subject; and our conduct in life, as well as in the arts, is or ought to be
generally governed by this habitual reason: it is our happiness that we are enabled to
draw on such funds. If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on
every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
‘It appears to me therefore’ (continues Sir Joshua) ‘that our first thoughts, that is, the
effect which any thing produces on our minds on its first appearance, is never to be
forgotten; and it demands for that reason, because it is the first, to be laid up with care.
If this be not done, the artist may happen to impose on himself by partial reasoning;
by a cold consideration of those animated thoughts which proceed, not perhaps from
caprice or rashness (as he may afterwards conceit), but from the fulness of his mind,
enriched with the copious stores of all the various inventions which he had ever seen,
or had ever passed in his mind. These ideas are infused into his design, without any
conscious effort; but if he be not on his guard, he may reconsider and correct them, till
the whole matter is reduced to a commonplace invention.
‘This is sometimes the effect of what I mean to caution you against; that is to say, an
unfounded distrust of the imagination and feeling, in favour of narrow, partial,
confined, argumentative theories, and of principles that seem to apply to the design in
hand, without considering those general impressions on the fancy in which real
principles of sound reason and of much more weight and importance, are involved,
and, as it were, lie hid under the appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment. Reason,
without doubt, must ultimately determine everything; at this minute it is required to
inform us when that very reason is to give way to feeling.’
Mr. Burke, by whom the foregoing train of thinking was probably suggested, has insisted on the
same thing, and made rather a perverse use of it in several parts of his _Reflections on the French
Revolution; and Windham in one of his Speeches has clenched it into an aphorism—’There is
nothing so true as habit.’ Once more I would say, common sense is tacit reason. Conscience is the
same tacit sense of right and wrong, or the impression of our moral experience and moral
apprehensions on the mind, which, because it works unseen, yet certainly, we suppose to be an
instinct, implanted in the mind; as we sometimes attribute the violent operations of our passions,
of which we can neither trace the source nor assign the reason, to the instigation of the Devil! I
shall here try to go more at large into this subject, and to give such instances and illustrations of
it as occur to me.
One of the persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to Government and been included in
a charge for high treason in the year 1794, had retired soon after into Wales to write an epic poem
and enjoy the luxuries of a rural life. In his peregrinations through that beautiful scenery, he had
arrived one fine morning at the inn at Llangollen, in the romantic valley of that name. He had
ordered his breakfast, and was sitting at the window in all the dalliance of expectation when a face

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