§ 4. But gives to the Imagina

tion its regard

ant power over them.

conception of obscurity and indefiniteness; so that whatever emotions depend absolutely on imperfectness of conception, as the horror of Milton's Death, cannot be rendered by art; for art can only lay hold of things which have shape, and destroys by its touch the fearfulness or pleasureableness of those which shape have none.

But on this indistinctness of conception, itself comparatively valueless and unaffecting, is based the operation of the Imaginative faculty with which we are at present concerned, and in which its glory is consummated; whereby, depriving the subject of material and bodily shape, and regarding such of its qualities only as it chooses for particular purpose, it forges these qualities together in such groups and forms as it desires, and gives to their abstract being consistency and reality, by striking them as it were with the die of an image belonging to other matter, which stroke having once received, they pass current at once in the peculiar conjunction and for the peculiar value desired.

Thus, in the description of Satan quoted in the first chapter, "And like a comet burned," the bodily shape of the angel is destroyed, the inflaming of the formless spirit is alone regarded; and this, and his power of evil, associated in one fearful and abstract conception, are stamped to give them distinctness and permanence with the image of the comet, "That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge." Yet this could not be done, but that the image of the comet itself is in a measure indistinct, capable of awful expansion, and full of threatening and fear. Again, in his fall, the imagination gathers up the thunder, the resistance, the massy prostration, separates them from the external form, and binds them together by the help of that image of the mountain half sunk; which again would be unfit but for its own indistinctness, and for that glorious addition " with all his pines," whereby a vitality and spear-like hostility are communicated to its falling form; and the fall is marked as not utter subversion, but sinking only, the pines remaining in their uprightness and unity and threatening of darkness upon the descended precipice; and again, in that yet more noble passage at the close of the fourth book, where almost every operation of the contemplative imagination is concentrated; the

angelic squadron first gathered into one burning mass by the single expression "sharpening in mooned horns," then told out in their unity and multitude and stooped hostility, by the image of the wind upon the corn; Satan endowed with godlike strength and endurance in that mighty line, "Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved," with infinitude of size the next instant, and with all the vagueness and terribleness of spiritual power, by the "Horrour plumed," and the "what seemed both spear and shield."

The third function of Fancy already spoken of as subordinate to this of the Imagination, is the highest of which she is capable; like the Imagination, she beholds in the things submitted to her treatment things different from the actual; but the suggestions she follows are not in their nature essential in the object contemplated; and the images resulting, instead of illustrating, may lead the mind away from it, and change the current of contemplative feeling: for, as in her operation parallel to Imagination penetrative we saw her dwelling upon external features, while the nobler sister faculty entered within; so now, when both, from what they see and know in their immediate object, are conjuring up images illustrative or elevatory of it, the Fancy necessarily summons those of mere external relationship, and therefore of unaffecting influence; while the Imagination, by every ghost she raises, tells tales about the prison house, and therefore never loses her power over the heart, nor her unity of emotion. On the other hand, the regardant or contemplative action of Fancy is in this different from, and in this nobler than, that mere seizing and likeness-catching operation we saw in her before; that, when contemplative, she verily believes in the truth of the vision she has summoned, loses sight of actuality, and beholds the new and spiritual image faithfully and even seriously; whereas, before, she summoned no spiritual image, but merely caught the vivid actuality, or the curious resemblance of the real object; not that these two operations are separate, for the Fancy passes gradually from mere vivid sight of reality, and witty suggestion of likeness, to a ghostly sight of what is unreal; and through this, in proportion as she begins to feel, she rises towards and partakes of Imagination itself; for Imagination and Fancy are continually united, and it is necessary, when they are so, carefully to distinguish the feelingless

part which is Fancy's, from the sentient part, which is Imagination's. Let us take a few instances. Here is Fancy, first, very beautiful, in her simple capacity of likeness-catching:

"To-day we purpose-ay, this hour we mount,
To spur three leagues towards the Apennine.
Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count
His dewy rosary on the eglantine."

Seizing on the outside resemblances of bead form, and on the
slipping from their threading bough one by one, the fancy is con-
tent to lose the heart of the thing, the solemnity of prayer: or
perhaps I do the glorious poet wrong in saying this, for the sense
of a sun worship and orison in beginning its race, may have been
in his mind; and so far as it was so,
was so, the passage is imaginative and
not fanciful. But that which most readers would accept from it,
is the mere flash of the external image, in whose truth the Fancy
herself does not yet believe, and therefore is not yet contemplative.
Here, however, is Fancy believing in the images she creates:

"It feeds the quick growth of the serpent-vine,
And the dark linked ivy tangling wild,

And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms,
Which star the winds with points of coloured light

As they rain through them; and bright golden globes
Of fruit suspended in their own green heaven.”

It is not, observe, a mere likeness that is caught here; but the flowers and fruit are entirely deprived by the fancy of their material existence, and contemplated by her seriously and faithfully as stars and worlds; yet it is only external likeness that she catches; she forces the resemblance, and lowers the dignity of the adopted image.

Next take two delicious stanzas of Fancy regardant (believing in her creations), followed by one of heavenly imagination, from Wordsworth's address to the daisy :

“I see thee glittering from afar,

And then thou art a pretty star,—

Not quite so fair as many are

In heaven above thee.

Yet like a star, with glittering crest,

Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest ;-
May peace come never to his nest
Who shall reprove thee!

"Sweet flower - for by that name at last,
When all my reveries are past,

I call thee, and to that cleave fast

Sweet silent creature,

That breath'st with me, in sun and air,

Do thou, as thou art wont, repair

My heart with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature."

instances.

Observe how spiritual, yet how wandering and playful, the fancy § 6 Various is in the first two stanzas, and how far she flies from the matter in hand; never stopping to brood on the character of any one of the images she summons, and yet for a moment truly seeing and believing in them all; while in the last stanza the imagination returns with its deep feeling to the heart of the flower, and “cleaves fast” to that. Compare the operation of the Imagination in Coleridge, on one of the most trifling objects that could possibly have been submitted to its action:

"The thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not:
Only that film which fluttered on the grate
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me, who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit

By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of thought."

Lastly, observe the sweet operation of Fancy regardant, in the following well-known passage from Scott, where both her beholding and transforming powers are seen in their simplicity:

"The rocky summits, split and rent,

Formed turret, dome, or battlement,
Or seemed fantastically set

With cupola or minaret.

Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
Nor lacked they many a banner fair,
For, from their shivered brows displayed,
Far o'er th' unfathomable glade,

All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen,

The briar-rose fell, in streamers green,

And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes
Waved in the west wind's summer sighs."

Let the reader refer to this passage, with its pretty tremulous conclusion above the pine tree," where glistening streamers waved and danced," and then compare with it the following, where the Imagination operates on a scene nearly similar:

66

Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed

The struggling brook; tall spires of windle strae

Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines,
Branchless and blasted, clenched, with grasping roots,
Th' unwilling soil.

A gradual change was here,
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
And white; and, where irradiate dewy eyes
Had shone, gleam stony orbs; so from his steps
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
And musical motions.

Where the pass extends

Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems with its accumulated crags
To overhang the world; for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars, and descending moon,
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills
Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
In naked and severe simplicity,
Made contrast with the universe. A pine
Rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
Yielding one only response at each pause,

In most familiar cadence, with the howl,
The thunder, and the hiss of homeless streams,
Mingling its solemn song."

In this last passage, the mind never departs from its solemn pos