Gents Mag 1842 part 1 p.7
|
|
|
|
|
introduction | ||
|
|
list, 2nd qtr 19th century | ||
|
|
previous page
next page |
||
|
Gentleman's Magazine 1842 part 1 p.7
FANCY here is the sovereign power; and imaginations are her workmanship. So, also, he places Satan close to 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 Adams 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." Ib. b.8. So again, where Adam "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.4. And in the same book, Fancy, or Mind, are joined 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 addressed 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 height 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 the words became, and continued to be, employed indiscriminately, until Mr. Stewart projected the discussion, 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 genious, 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 to the human constitution to |
|||
|
* Elements, ut supra.
|
|||
|
|
next page | ||
|
|
|||
Lakes Guides menu.