button to main menu  Gents Mag 1842 part 1 p.12

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Gentleman's Magazine 1842 part 1 p.12
Prophet, the English Bard, and the English Divine: these are the phantasmata of Plutarch. To the imagination, the vision of the father following the son, and shouting to warn and guide him in his perilous course: this is the phantasia of Plutarch.
But we have to deal with the POET, and we therefore again resort to poetry for aid in illustrating and confirming our opinions.
Mr. Taylor remarks, and the remark may be true, that Macpherson had more fancy than imagination. It is, indeed, quite possible, that a writer may create by impersonation; and that he may not be able to adorn his own creation with characteristic attributes.
Collins was a poet of a different order; and his far-famed Ode on the Passions, once so familiar to the ear of youth, will enable us to display in comparison the peculiar characteristics of fancy and imagination, acting in concert to produce one scenic effect.
The Passions, as so many exisitencies, thronging to the cell of Music, snatching the instruments of sound from the myrtles upon which they hung; and their mad resolution, each to prove his own expressive power; the several impersonations of Fear and Anger, Despair and Hope, Revenge and Jealousy, of Pity, of Melancholy and of Cheerfulness, are the pure creations of Fancy; but she must resort to the aid of Imagination for a supply of imagery, from which she may borrow the appropriate attributes, actions, passions, with which she may endow these her creatures. It is from these that she must select the picture of Fear, recoiling at the sounds himself had made; of the rude clash and hurried hand of Anger, and of the enchanted smile and waving golden hair of Hope; of the low sullen sounds of Despair; of the numbers of Jealousy, fixed on nought; of the notes, in which, by distance made more sweet, Melancholy poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul; and, lastly, of the inspiring air, ringing through dale and thicket, blown by Cheerfulness, with bow across her shoulder, and buskins gemmed with morning dew.
We now approach the preface of our POET, in which he explains his tenets, and to the poems which he professes to have composed in consistency with them. Here we are to encounter a combination of precept and practice, with the experto credite of a consummate master in his art. We shall not, we suspect, gain much ground, either in the estimation of the author, or that of our reader, when we commence with an acknowledgment that we suspect ourselves unable to understand the tenets sufficiently to reduce them to precepts by which the practice might be tried; or to discriminate whether each poem can, in conformity with them, pretend to be composed under the influence of one poetic power in preference to the other. We are perfectly sure that the manly and liberal mind of the Poet will not fancy that under this acknowledgment it is intended to couch the slightest disrespect; and we can as confidently assure him that it is, on the other hand, from respect, a just respect, to opinions entertained by him, that we have thought it worth while to continue so prolonged a discussion, as, we are apprehensive, this must now begin to appear. Our readers, however, will begin to revive their flagging attention (if any have permitted it to flag) when we apprize them that it is to Wordsworth, and to him almost alone, to whom they will now be called to lend their ears.
The POET remarks, upon the explanation of Mr. Taylor which we have above quoted, "It is not easy to find how imagination, thus explained, differs from distinct remembrance of images, or fancy, from quick and vivid recollection of them; each is nothing more than a mode of memory."
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