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the contrary, a function which, equally with that of the man of 
science, loves before all things—fitness, order, harmony. 
And now let me ask : what do we mean by the fancy, and how 
does it differ in art from the imagination? Often enough it is 
used for the imagination simply, or for a lower kind of imagina- 
tion. Some writers seem to regard it as the imaginative faculty 
dealing with what they call fantastic or unreal things. I should, 
however, define it as that which sets forth separate or fragment- 
ary images in opposition to images combined and harmonious. 
It is quick, nimble, casual ; while the imagination is deliberative 
and reflective in its operations. It is also the faculty which 
seizes upon the similitudes and likenesses of things, and on this 
side it approaches to wit. Finally, while the imagination is 
essentially constructive, the fancy is decorative; the first deals 
with essentials, the second with embellishments. 
In that delightful little book of meditative devotion, for the 
issue of which we have to thank our friend Mr. John E. Bailey, 
there is a quaint passage about meditation and contemplation of 
which we are reminded by this comparison of the imagination 
and the fancy : 
For Meditation considers her objects piece by piece ; but Contemplation 
sums them all together and sees, as in a gross, all the several beauties of 
Meditation’s objects. Meditation is with a man as he that smells the violet, 
the rose, the jessamine, and the orange flowers dividually. (My meditations 
of the Lord are sweet of themselves, saith David.) But Contemplation is a 
water compounded of them all. 
The way in which the imagination and the fancy work in 
painting as in literature, would be well seen by a study of such a 
masterpiece as that inimitable lyric of Shelley’s, the Ode To a 
Skylark. We should probably first discover that the genesis of 
such a piece of art would lie in some instantaneous impulse from 
within ; or in some flashing hint from without. I believe that 
all the highest work of painter or of poet does so begin. It is not 
built as a tower; or woven as a web: it starts from a central 
germ, and round that it grows and gathers by the force of its first 
intention. We should see, in the study of this poem, that it was 
the imagination which formed the image of a bird, which yet is 
not a bird, but an unbodied spirit of joy; which developed this 
conception, and determined how far it should be carried; which 
decided what was and what was uot in harmony with it; and 
which regulated the force of the initial emotion. But itis the 
fancy, working in subservience to the imagination, which gives 
us the successive and fragmentary similitudes which we have, for 
instance, in the following stanzas :— 
Like a high-born maiden 
In a palace tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 
Soul in secret hour. 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: 
