positions of all eloquent writers, whether in prose or verse, and chiefly from those of our own country. Scarcely a page of the impassioned part of Bishop Taylor's works can be opened that shall not afford examples. Referring the reader to these inestimable volumes, we will content ourselves with placing a conceit, ascribed to Lord Chesterfield, in contrast with a passage from the Paradise Lost, The dews of the evening most carefully shun : They are tears of the sky for the loss of the sun. »

After the transgression of Adam, Milton, with other appearances of sympathizing nature, thus marks the immediate consequence : Sky lower'd, and, muttering thunder, some few drops Wept at completion of the mortal sin. »>

The associating link is the very same in each instance: dew and rain, not distinguishable from the liquid substance of tears, are employed as indications of sorrow. A flash of surprise is the effect in the former case: a flash of surprise, and nothing more; for the nature of things does not sustain the combination. In the latter, the effects of the act, of which there is this immediate consequence and visible sign, are so momentous, that the mind acknowledges the justice and reasonableness of the sympathy in nature so manifested; and the sky weeps drops of water, as if with human eyes as if earth had before trembled from her entrails, and nature gives a second groan.'

At the first opening of this splendid passage, we perceive a mysterious light, which seems to direct us out of the paths in which we were wandering; but it vanishes before we have finished it. Indeed-if we might say so with due reverence— the poet leaves us even more perplexed than the critics; and we are tempted to acknowledge the justice of the profound reasonings of those supporters, of the successful candidate at the late Oxford election to the Professorship of Poetry, who pronounced him better qualified for it than his antagonistfirst, in respect of orthodoxy; secondly, in that he had never been known to aberrate into verse.

For surely the distinction between Imagination and Fancy cannot lie, in the first place, in the comparative profusion and rapidity of succession of their respective imagery. Take for instances the inspired Prophets, or Eschylus, or Milton, in many parts: what can exceed the rapidity with which the images are poured forth, wheel within wheel, or as if each was pregnant with its successor? And yet we surely, in com

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mon parlance, denominate these instances of their superlative Imagination, not of their Fancy. And Mr. Wordsworth then proceeds to ascribe to Fancy, in the alternative, a very opposite function-that of subtly detecting remote affinities;-here, again, assimilating it, as other authorities have done, to something radically different, Wit; and making it altogether unlike that which he nevertheless with the utmost truth asserts it to be a creative faculty.

May we venture on the still bolder step of quarrelling with the instance which so high an authority has selected in support of his position? The passage from Lord Chesterfield is of course a mere conceit, passable enough for a person of quality. But is not the passage of Milton in reality a conceit also, although of a far higher description? Does it exhibit any creative faculty? Does it call up any image in the mind of the reader, or suggest any as present in that of the poet? Is it, in short, any thing more than an effort of thought, 'associating the original idea with things to which, in some 'view or other, it bears a resemblance,' by what Aristotle would have called a metaphor by analogy? For,' as that most unpoetical philosopher would infallibly have summed up the case, 6 as tears are to the human face, so are drops of water to the sky.'

Nor will another distinguished poet afford us any better guidance out of our difficulties. Lord Byron, in the course of the paradoxical warfare which it was his pleasure to wage against the poetical taste of his times, thought proper to assert, among other doctrines, that Pope was an imaginative poet; and supported his position by example, as follows:

'We are sneeringly told that Pope is the poet of reason»-as if this was a reason for his being no poet! Taking passage for passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with imagination, from Pope, than from any two living poets, be they who they may. To take an instance at random from a species of composition not very favourable to imagination- satire. Set down the character of Sporus, with all the wonderful play of fancy which is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of verses, from any two existing poets of the same power and the same variety-where will you find them?'

Let us take a few specimens from the famous character of Sporus,' to which Lord Byron here refers :

'Yes, let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings:
Whose buz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys.
Eternal smiles his emptinesss betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have express'd,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none can trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.'

Surely, whether we agree with the noble critic in his admiration of this passage or not, it is rhetoric, not poetry; or poetry, at best, only of that secondary sort of which we have spoken. It is a collection of witty thoughts, poured forth no doubt with great profusion and variety,' fetched with some trouble from various repositories, and placed in collocation by a tour-de-force. The last four verses are nervous and pointed enough; but their antithetical turn shows plainly the absence of imagination. Pope was not indeed destitute of that faculty, as modern criticasters sometimes affirm. It sparkles here and there, though intermixed with much of a polished but inferior metal, in the 'Rape of the Lock.' It colours with a deep and powerful tincture the pathos which is the predominating excellence in the Epistle of Heloisa,' and in the Ode to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' especially in the fine prediction of the decay of the house of her unnatural kindred

'While the long funerals blacken all the way.'

But these are exceptions, and do not alter the general character of his poetry. He is but the able, dexterous, and graceful workman, who fashions the material provided by thers.

These and many similar definitions suggest to us the doubt, whether, in the first place, there is any radical distinction at all between true Fancy and Imagination: and secondly, whether we are not apt to confound two very different qualities under the same name;-the true Fancy of which we have spoken,

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and that spurious Fancy which is the offspring of a quick wit, conversant with poetical imagery, but which differs from the former in being in no degree creative, nor one of the higher poetical faculties.

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To recur to a former instance. We are apt to term the poetry of the Tempest,' or of the Midsummer Night's Dream,' indiscriminately imaginative, and fanciful; ' and no one can fail to recognize the justice with which either epithet is applied to it. No one can fail to perceive, that the same 'creative' faculty, Imagination, peopled the isle of Prospero with delicate spirits, and the heath of Forres with ghastly sibyls;--that it is by a strictly similar exercise of genius, that disordered nature is made to sympathize with the waywardness of the fairy couple, and with the desolation of Lear. And, as we have said, all these scenes and passages are commonly, and properly, called imaginative. ' Yet the poetry of Macbeth' is rarely, and that of Lear' never, called 'fanciful, by correct critics. From whence does this difference arise? Merely, we suspect, from the subject-matter, and not at all from any distinction between the qualities. All poetical creations are imaginative; but when we want a word to distinguish those of a gayer, lighter order-more beautiful than sublime, and especially those which are fetched from a very unreal and dream-like world-we are apt to term them fanciful, in much the same sense as the Germans sometimes use the word phantastisch.

Spurious Fancy-that which the critics above cited have called by that name-seems to us altogether a different faculty, not in the least allied to Imagination or true Fancy, but belonging to the same category as Thought, Wit, Judgment, and many other manifestations of Intellectual Power. While the first class of faculties creates, the other remodels, compares, distinguishes; and often elaborates by effort, effects very similar to those which the former produces spontaneously. But instead of encumbering ourselves any further with definitions which we are forced to confess it, express our meaning but inadequately, let us see whether a few instances will not assist us in conveying it, whether right or wrong, to the mind

of the reader; and if we choose them from among favourite and well-known passages, it is on the principle of Dante

Che l'animo di quel, ch' ode, non posa

Né ferma fede per esempio, ch' haja

La sua radice incognita e nascosa.'

One of the commonest exercises of the imaginative faculty is Personification; and we are apt to forget how much of what is now merely metaphorical language, in common use, was originally imaginative in the highest degree. 'Hope and Charity, Love and Pity,' it has been said, have now be'come common-places; but they were, notwithsanding, among the first and simpler creations of the art.'

Pallida Mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,
Regumque turres,'

says Horace. Horace was not an imaginative writer; and probably took these phrases, without attaching any distinct image to them, out of the Gradus ad Parnassum which he carried in his head. But the first who personified Death, and saw the livid spectre knocking at the doors of her destined victims-(compare the description of the plague in that work of a true poet, 'Anastasius')-possessed an imagination of no common order. Let us see what success his image meets with, when it falls into the hands of a French polisher of modern days, who works with the implements of thought or wit— Malherbe :

'La mort a des rigueurs à nulle autre pareilles:
Nous avons beau parler,

La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles

Et nous laisse crier!'

Thus far he has succeeded only in reducing the phamtom of old times to the similitude of an angry schoolmistress, or obdurate landlady. But the turn which follows has been universally admired :---

'Le pauvre en sa cabane, où le chaume le couvre,

Est sujet à ses lois,

Et la garde qui veille aux barrières du Louvre

N'en défend pas nos rois.'

And a fine thought it is, but only a thought — it adds