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Gentleman's Magazine 1842 part 1 p.9
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 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 palette 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
φαντασια,
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! For
thou seest nothing of those things which thou seemest to
see."
"Here," exclaims the critic, "the Poet himself saw the
Furies; and what he fancied he compelled also the auditors
also to see." Another example of poetical imagery, given by
Longinus, is from a lost drama of Euripedes, in which
Phoebus is described giving his last instructions to his
ambitious son.
Σειριου νωτα,
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 Minervae.
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