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The End of the first Vision of Mirzah. No. 160. Monday, September 3, 1711. Addison. ... Cui mens divinior, atque os Magna sonaturum, des nominis hujus honorem. Hor. There is no Character more frequently given to a Writer, than that of being a Genius. I have heard many a little Sonneteer called a fine Genius.
We can only regret that these rays of the mens divinior did not shine with a more steadfast light; and that a spirit which, amid the sharp press of manifold cares and distractions, had ever vibrated with lofty sympathies, was not now more constant to its faith in the beneficent powers and processes of the Unseen Time.
His soul walks not by the side of the master of the funeral ceremonies. To moulder under marble, or to moulder under clay, 'tis still to moulder. To have around one's bier children in red and children in blue, or to have not a creature, what matters it?" These are the gleams of the mens divinior, that relieve the perplexing moral squalor of the portrait.
And even these mechanical printers who threaten to make learning a base and vulgar thing even they must depend on the manuscript over which we scholars have bent with that insight into the poet's meaning which is closely akin to the mens divinior of the poet himself; unless they would flood the world with grammatical falsities and inexplicable anomalies that would turn the very fountain of Parnassus into a deluge of poisonous mud.
SATIETAS VITAE: cf. 85 senectus autem et seq., and satietas vivendi in pro Marc. 27; also Tusc. 1, 109 vita acta perficiat ut satis superque vixisse videamur. CERNERE: of the mind also in 82. With the context cf. Div. 1, 63 animus appropinquante morte multo est divinior; facilius evenit appropinquante morte ut animi futura augurentur. VESTROS PATRES: n. on 15.
The watch, compass, and musical snuff-box of one of the party created but little astonishment; they looked at their own faces in the bright covers, and were most stupidly inattentive to what would have excited the wonder of almost any imagination, however savage. Here was "the os sublime," but the "spiritus intus," the "mens divinior," were scarcely discoverable.
Cui mens divinior, atque os Magna sonaturum des nominis hujus honorem. HOR., Sat. i. 4, 43. On him confer the poet's sacred name, Whose lofty voice declares the heavenly flame. There is no character more frequently given to a writer than that of being a genius. I have heard many a little sonneteer called a fine genius.
This taste for the "things of heaven," another phrase he was fond of using, this mens divinior, was due perhaps to the influence produced on his mind by the first books he read at his uncle's.
It is the mens divinior which hides within the actual, transfiguring matter-of-fact into matter-of-meaning for him who has the gift of second-sight. In this sense Hogarth is often more truly ideal than Raphael, Shakespeare often more truly so than the Greeks.
He had not in any great degree the MENS DIVINIOR, the dignity of genius. Much, however, must be allowed to the author of a new species of composition, though it be not of the highest kind.
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