Ήρως Αυτομέδων τε και Αλκιμος, οζος Άρηος, Εσθων και πινων, ετι και παρεκειτο τραπεζα. 'Τους δ' ελαθ ̓ εισελθων Πριαμος μέγας, αγχι δ' αρα στας, Μνησαι πατρος σειο, θεοις επιεικελ' Αχιλλεύ, ον συ πρώην κτεινας, αμυνομένον περὶ πατρης, Έκτορα του νυν ινεχ' ἱκανω νηας Αχαιών, Ως φατο τω δ' αρα πατρος ὑφ ̓ ἱμερον ώρσε γοοιο. Iliad, Lib. xxίν., τ. 469. So saying, Mercury vanished up to heaven: Holding the mules and horses; and the old man A branch of Mars, stood by him. They had been To foreign lands, and comes into the house And the rest wonder'd, looking at each other. To the same age have we both come, the same Weak pass; and though the neighboring chiefs may vex Yet when he hears that thou art still alive, When the Greeks came'; nineteen were of one womb; The rest my women bore me in my house. The knees of many of these fierce Mars has loosen'd; He ceased; and there arose Sharp longing in Achilles for his father; And the whole house might hear them as they moan'd. His soul with tears, and sharp desire had left O lovely and immortal privilege of genius! that can stretch its hand out of the wastes of time, thousands of years back, and touch our eyelids with tears. In these passages there is not a word which a man of the most matter-of-fact understanding might not have written, if he had thought of it. But in poetry, feeling and imagination are necessary to the perception and presentation even of matters of fact. They, and they only, see what is proper to be told, and what to be kept back; what is pertinent, affecting, and essential. Without feeling, there is a want of delicacy and distinction; without imagination, there is no true embodiment. In poets, even good of their kind, but without a genius for narration, the action would have been encumbered or diverted with ingenious mistakes. The over-contemplative would have given us too many remarks; the overlyrical, a style too much carried away; the over-fanciful, conceits and too many similes; the unimaginative, the facts without the feeling, and not even those. We should have been told nothing of the "grey chin," of the house hearing them as they moaned, or of Achilles gently putting the old man aside; much less of that yearning for his father, which made the hero tremble in every limb. Writers without the greatest passion and power do not feel in this way, nor are capable of expressing the feeling; though there is enough sensibility and imagination all over the world to enable mankind to be moved by it, when the poet strikes his truth into their hearts. The reverse of imagination is exhibited in pure absence of ideas, in commonplaces, and, above all, in conventional metaphor, or such images and their phraseology as have become the common property of discourse and writing. Addison's Cato is full of them. Passion unpitied and successless love I've sounded my Numidians, man by man, The virtuous Marcia towers above her sex. Of the same kind is his "courting the yoke"-" distracting my very heart"-" calling up all" one's "father" in one's soul"working every nerve"-" copying a bright example;" in short, the whole play, relieved now and then with a smart sentence or turn of words. The following is a pregnant example of plagiarism and weak writing. It is from another tragedy of Addison's time, the Mariamne of Fenton : Mariamne, with superior charms, Triumphs o'er reason: in her look she bears In her young lover's soul; a winning grace "Triumphing o'er reason" is an old acquaintance of everybody's. "Paradise in her look" is from the Italian poets through Dryden. "Fair as the first idea," &c., is from Milton spoilt; "winning grace" and "steps" from Milton and Tibullus, both spoilt. Whenever beauties are stolen by such a writer, they are sure to be spoilt; just as when a great writer borrows, he improves. To come now to Fancy,—she is a younger sister of Imagination, without the other's weight of thought and feeling. Imagi nation indeed, purely so called, is all feeling; the feeling of the subtlest and most affecting analogies; the perception of sympathies in the natures of things, or in their popular attributes. Fancy is sporting with their resemblance, real or supposed, and with airy and fantastical creations. Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid Troilus and Cressida, Act iii., sc. 3. That is imagination ;-the strong mind sympathizing with the strong beast, and the weak love identified with the weak dewdrop. Oh!-and I forsooth In love! I that have been love's whip! A very beadle to a humorous sigh !— This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,- Love's Labor's Lost, Act iii., sc. 1. That is fancy;-a combination of images not in their nature connected, or brought together by the feeling, but by the will and pleasure; and having just enough hold of analogy to betray it into the hands of its smiling subjector. Silent icicles Quietly shining to the quiet moon. Coleridge's Frost at Midnight. That, again, is imagination ;-analogical sympathy; and exquisite of its kind it is. "You are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt." Twelfth Night, Act iii, sc. 2. And that is fancy;-one image capriciously suggested by another, and but half connected with the subject of discourse; nay, half opposed to it; for in the gaiety of the speaker's animal spirits, the "Dutchman's beard" is made to represent the lady! Imagination belongs to Tragedy, or the serious muse; Fancy |