Life of Cowley - Part B


  • How, according to Johnson, does genius flourish? [NU. 2014]

Samuel Johnson, an 18th-century English writer, essayist, and lexicographer, believed that genius flourishes through a combination of innate talent and the influence of external factors such as education and environment. He knew the process of forming poetic genius. He pointed out in ‘The Life of Cowley’ Cowley's familiarity to Spenser's ‘Fairy Queen’. He mentioned that this is one of such events that produce the quality of fondness for certain work which we commonly term as Genius or Talent. Johnson provides a definition of a talented person. A true genius person possesses a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction. The word 'accidentally' is significant as it suggests a universal fact about the development of talent. 


In real life we can ​​see such examples in the lives of many great men. Johnson quotes an example. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great portrait-painter had the first fondness for his art by reading Richardson's treatise (book). In the same way, Cowley was greatly inspired by Spenser's 'Fairy Queen'. Thus Johnson outlines the process of flourishing genius in a few words.