which I cannot forbear to add those of Spenser. I select these writers in preference to those of ancient Greece and Rome, because the anthropomorphitism of the Pagan religion subjected the minds of the greatest poets in those countries too much to the bondage of definite form; from which the Hebrews were preserved by their abhorrence of idolatry. This abhorrence was almost as strong in our great epic Poet, both from circumstances of his life, and from the constitution of his mind. However imbued the surface might be with classical literature, he was a Hebrew in soul; and all things tended in him towards the sublime. Spenser, of a gentler nature, maintained his freedom by aid of his allegorical spirit, at one time inciting him to create persons out of abstractions; and, at another, by a superior effort of genius, to give the universality and permanence of abstractions to his human beings, by means of attributes and emblems that belong to the highest moral truths and the purest sensations,-of which his character of Una is a glorious example. Of the human and dramatic imagination the words of Shakspeare are an inexhaustible source. "I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness, I never gave you kingdoms, called you daughters!" And if, bearing in mind the many poets distinguished by this prime quality, whose names I omit to mention; yet justified by a recollection of the insults which the ignorant, the incapable, and the presumptuous have heaped upon these and my other writings, I may be permitted to anticipate the judgment of posterity upon myself; I shall declare (censurable, I grant, if the notoriety of the fact above stated does not justify me) that I have given, in these unfavourable times, evidence of exertions of this faculty upon its worthiest objects-the external universe, the moral and religious sentiments of man, his natural affections, and his acquired passions; which have the same ennobling tendency as the productions of men, in this kind, worthy to be holden in undying remembrance. I dismiss this subject with observing-that, in the series of Poems placed under the head of Imagination, I have begun with one of the earliest processes of Nature in the development of this faculty. Guided by one of my own primary consciousnesses, I have represented a commutation and transfer of internal feelings, co-operating with external accidents to plant, for immortality, images of sound and sight, in the celestial soil of the imagination. The Boy, there introduced, is listening, with something of a feverish and restless anxiety, for the recurrence of the riotous sounds which he had previously excited; and, at the moment when the intenseness of his mind is beginning to remit, he is surprised into a perception of the solemn and tranquillizing images which the Poem describes.-The Poems next in succession exhibit the faculty exerting itself upon various objects of the external universe; then follow others, where it is employed upon feelings, characters, and actions; and the class is concluded with imaginative pictures of morál, political, and religious sentiments. To the mode in which Fancy has already been characterized as the power of evoking and combining, or, as my friend Mr Cole ridge has styled it, "the aggregative and associative power," my objection is only that the definition is too general. To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and to combine, belong as well to the Imagination as to the Fancy; but either the materials evoked and combined are different; or they are brought together under a different law, and for a different purpose. Fancy does not require that the materials which she makes use of should be susceptible of change in their constitution, from her touch; and, where they admit of modification, it is enough for her purpose if it be slight, limited, and evanescent. Directly the reverse of these, are the desires and demands of the Imagination. She recoils from everything but the plastic, the pliant, and the indefinite. She leaves it to fancy to describe Queen Mab as coming, "In shape no bigger than an agate-stone Having to speak of stature, she does not tell you that her gigantic Angel was as tall as Pompey's Pillar; much less that he was twelve cubits, or twelve hundred cubits high; or that his dimensions equalled those of Teneriffe or Atlas ;-because these, and if they were a million times as high, it would be the same, are bounded: The expression is, "His stature reached the sky!" the illimitable firmament! When the Imagination frames a comparison, if it does not strike on the first presentation, a sense of the truth of the likeness, from the moment that it is perceived, growsand continues to grow-upon the mind; the resemblance depending less upon outline of form and feature than upon expression and effect; less upon casual and outstanding, than upon inherent and internal properties: moreover, the images invariably modify each other. The law under which the processes of Fancy are carried on is as capricious as the accidents of things, and the effects are surprising, playful, ludicrous, amusing, tender, or pathetic as the objects happen to be appositely produced or fortunately combined. Fancy depends upon the rapidity and profusion with which she scatters her thoughts and images, trusting that their number, and the felicity with which they are linked together, will make amends for the want of individual value: or she prides herself upon the curious subtilty and the successful elaboration with which she can detect their lurking affinities. If she can win you over to her purpose, and impart to you her feelings, she cares not how unstable or transitory may be her influence, knowing that it will not be out of her power to resume it upon an apt occasion. But the Imagination is conscious of an indestructible dominion;-the soul may fall away from it, not being able to sustain its grandeur; but, if once felt and acknowleged, by no act of any other faculty of the mind can it be relaxed, impaired, or diminished. Fancy is given to quicken and to beguile the temporal part of our nature, Imagination to incite and to support the eternal. Yet it is not the less true that Fancy, as she is an active, is also, under her own laws and in her own spirit, a creative faculty. In what manner Fancy ambitiously aims at a rivalship with the Imagination, and Imagination stoops to work with the materials of Fancy, might be illustrated from the compositions of all eloquent writers, whether in prose or verse; and chiefly from those of our own country. Scarcely a page of the impassioned parts of Bishop Taylor's Works can be opened that shall not afford examples. Referring the reader to those inestimable volumes, I will content myself with placing a conceit (ascribed to Lord Chesterfield) in contrast with a passage from the "Paradise Lost;" "The dews of the evening most carefully shun, They are the tears of the sky for the loss of the sun." After the transgression of Adam, Milton, with other appearances of sympathizing Nature, thus marks the immediate consequence, "Sky lowered, and muttering thunder, some sad drops Wept at completion of the mortal sin." The associating link is the same in each instance;-dew or rain, not distinguishable from the liquid substance of tears, are employed as indications of sorrow. A flash of surprise is the effect in the former case-a flash of surprise and nothing more; for the nature of things does not sustain the combination. In the latter, the effects of the act, of which there is this immediate consequence and visible sign, are so momentous that the mind acknowledges the justice and reasonableness of the sympathy in Nature so manifested; and the sky weeps drops of water as if with human eyes, as "Earth had, before, trembled from her entrails, and Nature given a second groan." Awe-stricken as I am by contemplating the operations of the mind of this truly divine Poet, I scarcely dare venture to add that "An address to an infant," which the reader will find under the class of Fancy in the present volumes, exhibits something of this communion and interchange of instruments and functions between the two powers; and is, accordingly, placed last in the class, as a preparation for that of Imagination which follows. Finally, I will refer to Cotton's "Ode upon Winter," an admirable composition, though stained with some peculiarities of the age in which he lived, for a general illustration of the cha racteristics of Fancy. The middle part of this ode contains a most lively description of the entrance of Winter, with his retinue, as "A palsied king," and yet a military monarch,-advancing for conquest with his army; the several bodies of which, and their arms and equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, and a profusion of fanciful comparisons, which indicate on the part of the poet extreme activity of intellect, and a correspondent hurry of delightful feeling. He retires from the foo into his fortress, where Though myself a water-drinker, I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing what follows, as an instance still more happy of Fancy employed in the treatment of feeling, than in its preceding passages the Poem supplies of her management of forms. "Tis that, that gives the Poet rage Then let the chill Scirocco blow, And gird us round with hills of snow, And make the hollow mountains roar. Whilst we together jovial sit Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit; We'll think of all the Friends we know, We'll drink the Wanting into wealth. The Worthy in disgrace shall find The Brave shall triumph in success, Thus shall our healths do others good, What would we be but what we are?" When I sat down to write this preface it was my intention to have made it more comprehensive; but as all that I deem neces sary is expressed, I will detain the reader no longer, W. W. POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH. EXTRACT FROM THE CONCLUSION OF A POEM, COMPOSED UPON LEAVING SCHOOL. DEAR native regions, I foretell From what I feel at this farewell, That, wheresoe'er my steps shall tend, And whensoe'er my course shall end, My soul will cast the backward view, Thus, when the sun, prepared for rest, A lingering light he fondly throws On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose. WRITTEN IN VERY EARLY YOUTH. CALM is all nature as a resting wheel. Is cropping audibly his later meal: |