button to main menu  Gents Mag 1842 part 1 p.8
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Gentleman's Magazine 1842 part 1 p.8
deserve an appropiate name, and, for this purpose, the word FANCY would appear to be the best 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 thus 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 [l]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. 2.
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, these internal images, (φανταςειν is to cause to appear,) so as to complete ideal representations of absent
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