734 POETRY 



cede the execution, and it is a small matter whether the term Imagin- 

 ation be employed of the idea or the embodiment. Between Imagin- 

 ation and Fancy, therefore, as Coleridge conceived them, there could 

 be no confusion. 



The trouble began with Wordsworth. By Imagination, as by Fancy, 

 Wordsworth practically means the use of poetical imagery; but he as- 

 cribes to the higher faculty the images which occur to the poet, not in 

 his superficial moods, but under the influence of deeper emotion. 1 

 Leigh Hunt preserved and illustrated this distinction from a wide 

 range of poets. Mr. Ruskin, in the second volume of " Modern 

 Painters" (p. 163), turned aside from an elaborate disquisition upon 

 Imagination in painting to speak of poetry. " The Fancy," he says, 

 " sees the outside, and so is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear, 

 brilliant, and full of detail; the Imagination sees the heart and inner 

 nature, and makes them felt, but it is often obscure, mysterious, and 

 interrupted in its giving of outer detail. And then follows a re- 

 markable parallel between the flower passage in " Lycidas " and that 

 in the " Winter's Tale," greatly to the disadvantage of the former. 



It will be remembered that the passage from " Lycidas " is printed 

 with marginal notes, as follows : 



Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, Imagination. 



The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, Nugatory. 



The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, Fancy. 



The glowing violet, Imagination. 

 The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, Fancy and vulgar. 



With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, huayination. 



And every ilower that sad embroidery wears. Mixed. 



Then follows the passage from the "Winter's Tale " : 



() Proserpina, 



For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall 

 From Dis's wagon! daffodils, 

 That come before the swallow dares, and take 

 The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, 

 But sweeter than Ilie lids of Juno's eyes, 

 Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, 

 That die unmarried, ere they can behold 

 Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 

 Most incident to maids. 



i Characteristically Wordsworfh, in his celebrated preface, illustrated what 

 he meant by 1 magi nation, not from his friend's poetry, but his own. Upon 

 the line " Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods," he thus comments: 

 "The stock-dove is said to coo. a sound well imitating the note of the bird; 

 but by the intervention of the metaphor broods, the affections are called in by 

 the imagination to assist in marking the manner in which the bird reiterates 

 and prolongs her soft note, as if herself delighting to listen to it. and par- 

 ticipatory of a still and r;uiet satisfaction, like that which may be supposed 

 inseparable from the continuous process of incubation." 



