Gents Mag 1842 part 1 p.4
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Gentleman's Magazine 1842 part 1 p.4
any other time, when we think we can derive from it any advantage to the inquiries upon which we may be engaged. Reverting to the supposition of Mr. Stewart's originality, it may be observed, in confirmation of it, that Dr. Reid, who is to be considered, though of a different university, to have been the praelector of Scotch moral and metaphysical philosophy, expressly states, that what he denominates the IMAGINATION, was formerly called the FANCY, or PHANTASY: and suggest no change in the usage. Dr. Akenside introduces his eloquent poem on the Pleasures of Imagination, with an address to "indulgent Fancy," and in the progress of his work the names are interchanged, as it suited the taste or covenience of the author. Addison had before him, in his admirable essays under the same title, used the two names indiscriminately. It is not at all necessary for our instant purposes to enter into a discourse on the doctrines maintained by sects of ancient Greek philosophers with respect to Fancy, or Fantasy. The word (Φαυτασια) was, together with the philosophy of Greece, transferred to Rome by Cicero; but he renders it into Latin, not by Imaginatio, so long recognised by us as its synonym, but by Visum; and Quintillian by Visio. Imaginatio does not appear to have acquired in its native soil that "philosophical import" which has been bestowed upon its English descendant, but it becomes common in "that golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Tully or Plato," the Consolatio of Boethius.* It had probably acquired a current conversational familiarity in the English language long before the translation of this volume had been contemplated by the venerable Father of English Poetry; but we may very plausibly pretend that the pen of Chaucer enrolled it in our vocabulary in all the philosophic dignity with which he found it invested in the original Latin. It must not be omitted that Alfred, "the most glorious of English Kings," had before translated the writings of the Roman senator and consul into Anglo-Saxon of his own time. It will be interesting, and may be instructive to our more curious readers, if we give them an opportunity of learning in what philosophic acceptation this same word, now so variously interpreted,† was thus introduced to the acquaintance of the English scholar. Boethius was an Eclectic, and endeavoured to combine the philosophy of Plato with that of Aristotle. ‡ And, agreeably to the system which it was his ambition to construct, he severally explains the four terms - SENSUS, IMAGINATIO, Ratio, and Intellectus. (Lib. v. Pr.4.) SENSUS enim figuram in subjecta materia constitutam; IMAGINATIO vero solam sine materia judicat figuram: "For the WIT§ (SENSUS) comprehendeth without the figure (of the body of man) that is unstablished‖ |
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* Gibbon.
† Johnson has (suo more) eight interpretations of the noun Fancy, and four of Imagination: and (suo more) he says, Fancy, 1. Imagination: and Imagination, 1. Fancy. Webster has nine of Fancy, and five of Imagination. His first of the verb "to imagine," is, to form a notion or idea in the mind; to fancy. We can imagine, he adds, the figure of a horse's head united to a human body. In this sense, fancy is the more proper word. And in the New English Dictionary, it is said that to the FANCY, as distinguished from IMAGINATION, may be ascribed the province of personifying, and of investing the personification with qualities of real beings, supplied by memory or imagination. ‡ Brucker, v. iii.p.525. § And so the old expression, "Bless your Five Wits," i.e. Senses. ‖ The original is constitutam, which requires us to explain unstablished, to mean enstablished; as untrimmed, in K. John, means entrimmed. See untrimmed and unstablished, in New English Dictionary. |
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