Newton had a mind
predominantly ratiocinative: its movement was spontaneously towards the
abstract relations of things. Shakspeare had a mind predominantly
emotive, the intellect always moving in alliance with the feelings, and
spontaneously fastening upon the concrete facts in preference to their
abstract relations. Their mental Vision was turned towards images of
different orders, and it moved in alliance with different faculties;
but this Vision was the cardinal quality of both. Dr. Johnson was
guilty of a surprising fallacy in saying that a great mathematician
might also be a great poet: "Sir, a man can walk east as far as he can
walk west." True, but mathematics and poetry do not differ as east and
west; and he would hardly assert that a man who could walk twenty miles
could therefore swim that distance.
The real state of the case is somewhat obscured by our observing that
many men of science, and some even eminent as teachers and reporters,
display but slender claims to any unusual vigour of imagination. It
must be owned that they are often slightly dull; and in matters of Art
are not unfrequently blockheads.
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