AND IMAGINATION. 



461 



We often, however, meet with persons who have a strong and active pro- 

 pensity to combine ideas, without any attention to their natural agreement or 

 connexion. And it is in individuals of this description that the imagination 

 constitutes the ruling power, and lords it over the judgment. Such combi- 

 nations are soon made, for they (;ost no trouble, like those the judgment en- 

 gages in : and as the persons who are constitutionally prone to make them 

 possess, perhaps without an exception, a sanguineous or irritable tempera- 

 ment, the nature of which I explained in a late lecture of the present series,* 

 they are also made with peculiar liveliness and rapidity ; and I have hence 

 defined the imagination to be that faculty of the mind which calls forth and com- 

 bines ideas with great rapidity and vivacity, whether congruous or incongruous. 



This, however, is pure or simple imagination, and to observe it in its full 

 force we must select and attend to those states of the mind in which it is 

 altogether set at liberty from the control of the judgment ; we must follow 

 it up into the airy visions of sleep, the wild phantasms of delirium, the ex- 

 travagant fictions of madness, or the dark reveries of melancholy. In all 

 these states it has full play, and revels with unbounded career. And it shows 

 us distinctly the error of those psychologists who have regarded imagination, 

 genius, and fine taste as one and the same attribute. For here we behold the 

 restless power of imagination enthroned without a rival in the centre of the 

 intellectual empire, and yet unaccompanied, except perhaps in a few anoma- 

 lous cases, with taste or genius of any kind. A long habit of association, in 

 the case of dreaming and delirium, or some predominant feeling in the case 

 of madness or melancholy, may occasionally give a certain degree of con- 

 sistency or natural colouring to the ideas as they are successively imbodied ; 

 and I have hence described the ideas of imagination as characterized by lapid 

 and vivacious combinations, whether congruous or incongruous ; but for the 

 most part the consistency is only occasional and momentary ; or, if perma- 

 nent, limited to a single subject. 



Tried by this test, I am afraid Dr. Akenside, among others, will be found 

 to have fallen into some slight confusion in his idea of imagination or fancy 

 (for he uses the terms synonymously), as collected from his well-known and 

 very admirable poem — a poem in a few places, perhaps, obscure to general 

 readers from their unacquaintance with the Platonic philosophers, but com- 

 bining as much fire, and feeling, and classical elegance, and rich imagery, and 

 sweetness of versification, as any didactic poem of the same extent in the 

 English tongue. This poem he entitles " The Pleasures of Imagination 

 and the direct scope of it is to prove, firstly, that the highest pleasures of the 

 mind are those furnished by the imagination ; and, secondly, that they are 

 derived from the three sources of the Fair, the Wonderful, and the Sublime, 

 as they are discoverable in the kingdoms of art and nature, and are chiefly 

 collected and represented to us by poets and painters : — 



Know, then, whatever of nature's pregnant stores, 

 Whate'er of mimic Art's reflected forms, 

 Witli love and admiration thirs inflame 

 The powers of Fancy, her delighted sons 

 To three illustrious orders have referred ; — 

 Three sister-graces— whom the painter's hand, 

 The poet's tongue confesses : the Sublime, 

 The Wonderful, the Fair.— I see them dawn ! 

 I see the radiant visions where they rise, 

 More lovely than when Lucifer displays 

 His beaming forehead through the gales of morn, 

 To lead the train of Phoebus and the Spring. 



Who does not see that, through the whole of this the poet is speaking, not 

 of fancy or imagination in its proper and simple capacity, but of fancy or 

 imagination under the guidance of taste and genius ; and that, consequently, 

 he confounds these three faculties, different as they are from each other^ 

 under one common name. In like manner Mr. Allison commences the second 

 edition of his " Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste," with the fol- 



* Series in. Lecture xl. 



