in the matter subject. But the IMAGINATION Comprehendeth only the figure without the matter. Reason," continues the old Bard, "surmounteth Imagination, and comprehendeth, by universal looking, (universali consideratione,) the common Speces; * but the eye of Intelligence (INTELlectus) is higher, for it surmounteth the enuironning (ambitum) of the universitie (universe), and looketh over that by pure subtilty of thought."

And afterwards, in fuller description :

IMAGINATION, albeit so that it taketh of wit (ex sensibus visendi), the beginning to seen and formen the figures, algates, although that wit ne were not present, yet it enuironneth and comprehendeth all things sensible, not by reason sensible of deeming, but reason imaginative." (Non sensibili, sed imaginaria ratione judicandi.)

In these passages, which exhibit some of the earliest efforts in the English language to stammer out the accents of philosophy, the word Imaginatio is used as the name of a power of the mind; it is the Imagination,-literally, from the original; but in a subsequent passage, our countryman,- -as if in apprehension of failing to express the true meaning of his Author,-presses into his service an usage of the word with which he, perhaps, was intimately acquainted, but which is wholly unwarranted by the Latin text. (Met. 4).

"Philosophers" (he writes)" that highten Stoiciens" (i e. are called Stoics) "wend that Images and sensibilities, that is to say, sensible imaginations, or els, imaginations of sensible things, were imprinted into souls fro bodies without forth." Now for this repetition of "sensible imaginations, or els, imaginations of sensible things," there are in Boethius no other words than sensus and imagines.

It was not, indeed, till a far later period than that which includes the Roman philosophy, that the Latin IMAGINATIO was advanced to an equal fulness of importance with the Greek PHANTASIA. In the middle ages, we find their co-efficiency completely established; and the questions very formally discussed, whether this power differed at all from memory, or could, in any respect, be distinguished from the common sense. All this was, no doubt, well known to the learned of our own country; but the old steelcapt philosopher of Malmesbury, though he employs the two nouns to be of the same signification, yet, following the steps of Aristotle, he defines Phantasy, or Imagination, to be-"Conception remaining, and by little and little decaying from and after the act of sense."+

The words are now traced from their native homes, and implanted as synonyms in our own language; but, that they were not unanimously received as such, the poem on the Immortality of the Soul, by Sir John Davies, a contemporary of Hobbes, is sufficient proof. Davies, who was undoubtedly a very learned man, had a system to maintain, and in accordance with it, after devoting a section to each of the Senses, Seting, Hearing, Taste, Smell, and Touch, he allots one to the IMAGINATION, or the Common Sense, and another to FANTASY. Of the former he writes:

"These are the outward instruments of sense;

These are the guards which every thing must pass,

Ere it approach the mind's intelligence,

Or touch the fantasy, wit's looking glass.

enstablished; as untrimmed, in K. John, means entrimmed. See untrimmed and unstablished, in New English Dictionary.

* The edition of Islip, 1598, reads Speache, and this is followed by Chalmers. The original is Speciem.

+ Η δε φαντασια εστι αισθησις τις ασθενης, Aristotelis Opera. Du Val, ii. 536.

And yet these porters (i. e. the senses), which all things admit,

Themselves perceive not, nor discern the things;

One common power doth in the forehead sit,

Which all their proper forms together brings.
For all these nerves, which spirits of sense do bear,
And to those outward organs spreading so,

United are, as in a centre, there;

And there this pow'r those sundry forms doth know.

These outward organs present things receive,

This inward sense doth absent things retain ;

Yet straight transmits all forms she doth receive
Unto an higher region of the brain."

Such is described to be the province of that common power, that inward sense, to which the Author assigns the name of IMAGINATION only, or Common Sense. And that higher region of the brain, to which she transmits "all forms she doth perceive," is then described to be the IBI, "Where Fantasy, near handmaid to the mind,

Sits and beholds, and doth discern them all;
Compounds in one, things different in their kind,
Compares the black and white, the great and small.

Besides, those single forms she doth esteem,

And in her balance doth their values try,

Where some things good, and some things ill do seem,
And neutral some, in her fantastic eye.

This busy pow'r is working day and night;

For when the outward senses rest do take,

A thousand dreams, fantastical and light,

With fluttering wings do keep her still awake."

In a following stanza, of a section entitled Sensitive Memory, it is said of this Fantasy,

"Yet always all may not afore her be,

Successively she this and that intends;

Therefore such forms as she doth come to see
To Memory's large volume she commends."

And of Wir, the looking-glass of Fantasy, our Author writes—

"The Wit, the pupil of the Soul's clear eye,
And in Man's world the only shining star,
Looks in the mirror of the fantasy,

Where all the gath'rings of the senses are."

The Poet of Paradise has his distinctions likewise, which our readers must compare for themselves with that of Davies, and those of the middle ages,

-"But know, that in the soul

Are many lesser faculties, that serve

Reason as chief; among these, FANCY next
Her office holds; of all external things
Which the five watchful Senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes,
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All that we affirm, or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion: then retires
Into her private cell. When Nature rests,
Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakes
To imitate her; but misjoining shapes
Wild work produces oft, but most in dreams,
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late."

Paradise Lost, b. 5.

FANCY here is the sovereign power; and imaginations are her workmanship. So, also, he places Satan close at the ear of Eve:

"Assaying by his devilish arts to reach

The organs of her Fancy, and with them force
Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams."

-:

Ib. b. 4.

And where Adam relates, how " gentle sleep first found him," and he thought himself about "to pass into his former state, and forthwith to dissolve,"

"When suddenly at my head a dream,
Whose inward apparition gently mov'd
My fancy to believe I yet had being,
And liv'd."

So again, where Adam

Ib. b. 8.

"Dazzl'd and spent, sunk down, and sought repair
Of sleep

Mine eyes he clos'd, but open left the cell
Of Fancy, my internal sight."

Ib. b. 8.

And in the same book, Fancy, OR Mind, are conjoined as univocal—

"But apt the Mind, or Fancy, is to rove
Unchect, and of her roving is no end."

Ib. b. 4.

In the second book, our divine Poet uses imaginations as in the passage we have first quoted from him; and in the sixth, (and there, we think, only,) HUMAN IMAGINATION appears as a power of the mind: it is in the description of Michael and Satan preparing for battle.

"They ended parle, and both addrest for fight,
Unspeakable; for who, though with the tongue
Of angels, can relate, or to what things

Liken on earth conspicuous, that may lift
Human imagination to such heighth
Of godlike power."

Ib. b. 6.

But neither did the formal division of Davies, nor the practical example of Milton, control the course of subsequent writers, whether philosophers or poets; and from this time forth these words became, and continued to be, employed indiscriminately, until Mr. Stewart projected the disunion, of which we have above made mention.

To Mr. Stewart, therefore, it is now necessary that we should direct our attention.

"It is obvious (he writes *) that a creative imagination, when a person possesses it so habitually that it may be regarded as forming one of the characteristics of his genius, implies a power of summoning up, at pleasure, a particular class of ideas; and of ideas related to each other in a particular manner; which power can be the result only, of certain habits of association, which the individual has acquired. It is to this power of the mind, which is evidently a particular turn of thought(!), and not one of the common principles of our nature, that our best writers refer, in general, when they make use of the word FANCY.' "Whatever they” (i. e. the particular relations by which the ideas are connected)" may be, the power of summoning up at pleasure the ideas so related, as it is the groundwork of poetical genius, is of sufficient importance in the human constitution to

* Elements, ut supra.

deserve an appropriated name, and, for this purpose, the word fancy would appear to be the most convenient that our language affords."

According to the explanation (he proceeds) which has now been given of the word FANCY, the office of this power is to collect materials for the imagination; and therefore the latter power presupposes the former, while the former does not necessarily suppose the latter.

"A man whose habits of association present to him, for illustrating or embellishing a subject, a number of resembling or of analogous ideas, we call a man of FANCY; but for an effort of imagination, various other powers are necessary, particularly the powers of taste and of judgment; without which, we can produce nothing that will be a source of pleasure to others. It is the power of fancy which supplies the poet with the metaphorical language, and with all the analogies which are the foundation of his allusions; but it is the power of imagination that creates the complex scenes he describes, and the fictitious characters he delineates. To fancy, we apply the epithets of rich and luxuriant: to imagination, those of beautiful or sublime."*

As regards this application of epithets, it may be very reasonably asked, may they not be interchanged? Is not the imagination of Thomson rich and luxuriant ? Is not the fancy of Collins beautiful and sublime? And if these queries be answered in the affirmative, what becomes of this aboured effort at distinction?

Mr. Stewart's meaning, however, requires illustration: and a poet of his own country shall supply it.

"Yet such the destiny of all on earth :

So flourishes and fades majestic man;
Fair is the bud his vernal morn puts forth;
And fost'ring gales awhile the nursling fan:

O smile, ye heavens, serene :-ye mildews wan,
Ye blighting whirlwinds, spare his balmy prime,
Nor lessen of his life the little span !

Borne on the swift, though silent wings of Time,

Old Age comes on apace to ravage all the clime." Minstrel, st. 25. According to Mr. Stewart's interpretation of nature, it is the office of fancy to collect materials for the imagination, to supply the analogies that are the foundations of his allusions, and also to supply the language.

In the above poetic pourtraiture, then, we find man and his destiny, vegetable nature and its destiny, to be the materials which fancy has collected: the analogy between the two, as being both exposed to sudden and resistless destruction, was supplied by fancy; and by fancy also the language. What is wanting to the completion of the picture? the scenes or materials (for what are the materials but the scenes?) are created, and are delineated and described, by fancy. What then is left for imagination to perform? her aid may be dispensed with as superfluous. And yet Mr. Stewart insists that it is she who created the scenes.

Other objections present themselves against the views of Mr. Stewart; but the above will probably be deemed sufficient: for, unless distinctions of this kind are clear and determinate, they are worse than nugatory. We must proceed therefore to the Author of the Synonyms; who writes thus : "A man has IMAGINATION, in proportion as he can distinctly copy in idea the impressions of sense; it is the faculty which images to the mind the phenomena of sensation. A man has fancy in proportion as he can call up, connect, or associate, at pleasure, those internal images, (pavračel is to cause to appear,) so as to complete ideal representations of absent

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objects. Imagination is the power of depicting ;-fancy, of evoking and combining. The imagination is formed by patient observation: the fancy by a voluntary activity in shifting the scenery of the mind. The more accurate the imagination, the more safely may a painter or a poet undertake a delineation or a description, without the presence of the objects to be characterised. The more versatile the fancy, the more original and striking will be the decorations produced." Syn. 242.

Fancy, it is said, evokes-imagination depicts-consequently imagination is inert; she has nothing to depict, until fancy has evoked the images which are to be depicted. Imagination is a portrait painter, with her pencil and pallet in her hand, her canvas on her easel, awaiting the arrival of her sitter. A result surely never contemplated by this very ingenious writer; but one as assuredly inevitable from his mode of expressing himself.

Before we proceed to state the sentiments of the POET upon the matters at issue, we are induced to communicate our own; and, at the outset, we beg our more learned readers to call to remembrance, that the two most eminent critics of the Roman empire, Longinus and Quintillian, the one as remarkable for the ardour of his genius as the other for his taste and judgment, never thought of this distribution of the mind into separate critic and poetic powers. They do not talk of the fancy or the imagination, but of fancies and images. And to these names, the one of phantasiai, and the other of visiones, they give pretty closely the same explanation. "We," says Quintillian, "give the name of visio to that which the Greeks call pavraoia, by which the images of absent things are so represented to the mind that we seem to discern them with our eyes, and have them before us."* The Grecian, "by all the Nine inspired," produces the appeal of Orestes to the mother whom he had murdered;—And the pitiful and affectionate reply of his sister deserves to be added.

"ORESTES. Oh! mother, I implore thee, goad not against me the blood-eyed and snake-haired Virgins. They themselves are leaping close against me. "ELECTRA, Stay, O wretched one! stay quiet in thy bed! nothing of those things which thou seemest to see."

For thou seest

Here," exclaims the critic, "the Poet himself saw the Furies; and what he fancied he compelled also the auditors almost to see." Another example of poetical imagery, given by Longinus, is from a lost drama of Euripides, in which Phoebus is described giving his last instructions to his ambitious son; and not content with this, the parent hastens to follow the son, Zeptov vora, and with warning voice exclaims, 'Drive that way, now this; turn your chariot, Here!""

"May you not say," observes Longinus, "that the mind" (not the fancy, not the imagination, but the whole mind)" of the writer ascends the chariot with Phaeton, and that, sharing his danger, he flies along with the horses."

Plutarch had before referred to the scene in Orestes, in illustration of the distinction drawn by himself between phantasy and phantasm ; and for the same purposes he refers to the vision of Theoclymenus, when the Seer perceives the suitors moved to unspontaneous laughter; and altogether dementated by Pallas Minerva.

• Has imagines quisquis bene conceperit, is erit in affectibus potentissimus. Hunc quidam dicunt évpaytaσɩwtov, qui sibi res, voces, actus, secundum verum optime finget. Lib. vi. c. 2.

GENT. MAG. VOL XVII.

C