28 Prosser Hall Frye 



a number of parts. But this faculty is much more closely allied 

 with intellect, if not identical with it, than is the exaltation of the 

 senses and the emotions upon which vivid pic<"orial and musical 

 effect depends. In short, ever since the eighteenth century, liter- 

 ature has been becoming less and less intellectual. 



Nor, on the other hand, was the eighteenth century familiar 

 with imagination in its older Elizabethan manifestation, which 

 consists at its best, not so much in graphic vizualization or se- 

 ductive melody — though it practices them, too — as in a kind of 

 heightened spiritual perception or penetration which dissolves into 

 its essential unreality the whole world of appearances, together 

 with the very phantasms and eidola by which it succeeds in ex- 

 pressing itself. Compare, for instance, what will vuidoubtedly be 

 conceded Pope's highest flight, the closing lines of the Dimciad: 



"She comes ! she comes ! the sable throne behold 

 Of night primeval, and of Chaos old! 

 Before her, fancj^'s gilded clouds decay, 

 And all its varying rainbows die away 

 Thus at her fell approach, and secret might. 

 Art after art goes out, and all is night. 

 Nor public flame, nor private dares to shine; 

 Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine ! 

 Lo ! thy dread empire. Chaos ! is restored ; 

 Light dies before thy uncreating word ; 

 Thy hand, great Anarch ! lets the curtain fall, 

 And universal darkness buries all.'' — 



compare these lines with the following of Shakespeare's : 



"Out, out, brief candle ! 

 Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 

 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 

 And then is heard no more : it is a tale 

 Told by an idiot, full of sound and furj-, 

 Signifying nothing.'" 



Such utterances as this were quite out of the way of Pope and 

 his fellows. They are not quite out of our way ; there are rever- 

 berations of them throtigh the nineteenth century, feeble by com- 



' Shakespeare. Macbeth, V, v. 



28 



