Such a revised notion of the immediate source of human activities inevitably concentrated attention on the individual artist—a fact which may perhaps be reflected in the use from the seventeenth century onwards of the word _genius_ to describe not merely the “creative” faculty, but its possessor. For we can speak now of such and such a man being “a _genius_”. This little word, on which a whole chapter might be written, comes from the Latin ‘genius’[73] (from ‘gign-o’, ‘to bring into being’, a stem appearing also in _ingenious_, _engine_, ...), which in Roman mythology meant a person’s tutelary spirit, or special angel attending him everywhere and influencing his thoughts and actions. Its early meaning in English was much the same as that of _talent_,[74] which, of course, takes its meaning from the New Testament parable. That is to say, _genius_ signified an ability implanted in a man by God at his birth. But from about the seventeenth century this meaning began to ferment and expand in the most extraordinary way; it was distinguished from, and even opposed to, _talent_, and in the following century its force and suggestiveness were much enhanced by the use which was made of it to translate the Arabic ‘Djinn’, a powerful supernatural being. Although nowadays we generally distinguish this particular sense by the spelling _Genie_, the temporary fusion of meanings certainly deepened the strength and mystery of the older word, and may even have procreated the later Byronic tradition of mighty, lonely _poets_ with open necks and long hair and a plethora of mistresses and photographs.