Biographia Literaria
poem, which still remains unpublished, but of which the stanza and tone
of style were the same as those of The Female Vagrant, as originally
printed in the first volume of the Lyrical Ballads. There was here no
mark of strained thought, or forced diction, no crowd or turbulence of
imagery; and, as the poet hath himself well described in his Lines on
revisiting the Wye, manly reflection and human associations had given
both variety, and an additional interest to natural objects, which,
in the passion and appetite of the first love, they had seemed to him
neither to need nor permit. The occasional obscurities, which had risen
from an imperfect control over the resources of his native language, had
almost wholly disappeared, together with that worse defect of arbitrary
and illogical phrases, at once hackneyed and fantastic, which hold so
distinguished a place in the technique of ordinary poetry, and will,
more or less, alloy the earlier poems of the truest genius, unless
the attention has been specially directed to their worthlessness and
incongruity [21]. I did not perceive anything particular in the mere
style of the poem alluded to during its recitation, except indeed such
difference as was not separable from the thought and manner; and the
Spenserian stanza, which always, more or less, recalls to the reader’s
mind Spenser’s own style, would doubtless have authorized, in my then
opinion, a more frequent descent to the phrases of ordinary life, than
could without an ill effect have been hazarded in the heroic couplet.
It was not however the freedom from false taste, whether as to common
defects, or to those more properly his own, which made so unusual an
impression on my feelings immediately, and subsequently on my judgment.
It was the union of deep feeling with profound thought; the fine balance
of truth in observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying, the
objects observed; and above all the original gift of spreading the tone,
the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world
around forms, incidents, and situations, of which, for the common view,
custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dew
drops.
This excellence, which in all Mr. Wordsworth’s writings is more or
less predominant, and which constitutes the character of his mind, I no
sooner felt, than I sought to understand. Repeated meditations led me
first to suspect,--(and a more intimate analysis of the human faculties,
their appropriate marks, functions, and effects matured my conjecture
into full conviction,)--that Fancy and Imagination were two distinct and
widely different faculties, instead of being, according to the general
belief, either two names with one meaning, or, at furthest, the lower
and higher degree of one and the same power. It is not, I own, easy to
conceive a more apposite translation of the Greek phantasia than the
Latin imaginatio; but it is equally true that in all societies there
exists an instinct of growth, a certain collective, unconscious good
sense working progressively to desynonymize [22] those words originally
of the same meaning, which the conflux of dialects supplied to the
more homogeneous languages, as the Greek and German: and which the
same cause, joined with accidents of translation from original works of
different countries, occasion in mixed languages like our own. The first
and most important point to be proved is, that two conceptions perfectly
distinct are confused under one and the same word, and--this done--to
appropriate that word exclusively to the one meaning, and the synonyme,
should there be one, to the other. But if,--(as will be often the case
in the arts and sciences,)--no synonyme exists, we must either invent
or borrow a word. In the present instance the appropriation has already
begun, and been legitimated in the derivative adjective: Milton had a
highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful mind. If therefore I should
succeed in establishing the actual existence of two faculties generally
different, the nomenclature would be at once determined. To the
faculty by which I had characterized Milton, we should confine the term
‘imagination;’ while the other would be contra-distinguished as ‘fancy.’
Now were it once fully ascertained, that this division is no less
grounded in nature than that of delirium from mania, or Otway’s
Lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships of amber,
from Shakespeare’s
What! have his daughters brought him to this pass?
or from the preceding apostrophe to the elements; the theory of the fine
arts, and of poetry in particular, could not but derive some additional
and important light. It would in its immediate effects furnish a torch
of guidance to the philosophical critic; and ultimately to the poet
himself. In energetic minds, truth soon changes by domestication into
power; and from directing in the discrimination and appraisal of the
product, becomes influencive in the production. To admire on principle,
is the only way to imitate without loss of originality.
It has been already hinted, that metaphysics and psychology have long
been my hobby-horse. But to have a hobby-horse, and to be vain of it,
are so commonly found together, that they pass almost for the same. I
trust therefore, that there will be more good humour than contempt,
in the smile with which the reader chastises my self-complacency, if I
confess myself uncertain, whether the satisfaction from the perception
of a truth new to myself may not have been rendered more poignant by the
conceit, that it would be equally so to the public. There was a time,
certainly, in which I took some little credit to myself, in the belief
that I had been the first of my countrymen, who had pointed out the
diverse meaning of which the two terms were capable, and analyzed the
faculties to which they should be appropriated. Mr. W. Taylor’s recent
volume of synonymes I have not yet seen [23]; but his specification of
the terms in question has been clearly shown to be both insufficient and
erroneous by Mr. Wordsworth in the Preface added to the late collection
of his Poems. The explanation which Mr. Wordsworth has himself given,
will be found to differ from mine, chiefly, perhaps as our objects are
different. It could scarcely indeed happen otherwise, from the advantage
I have enjoyed of frequent conversation with him on a subject to which
a poem of his own first directed my attention, and my conclusions
concerning which he had made more lucid to myself by many happy
instances drawn from the operation of natural objects on the mind. But
it was Mr. Wordsworth’s purpose to consider the influences of fancy and
imagination as they are manifested in poetry, and from the different
effects to conclude their diversity in kind; while it is my object to
investigate the seminal principle, and then from the kind to deduce the
degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their
poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as
they lift themselves above ground, and are visible to the naked eye of
our common consciousness.
Yet even in this attempt I am aware that I shall be obliged to draw more
largely on the reader’s attention, than so immethodical a miscellany as
this can authorize; when in such a work (the Ecclesiasical Polity) of
such a mind as Hooker’s, the judicious author, though no less admirable
for the perspicuity than for the port and dignity of his language,--and
though he wrote for men of learning in a learned age,--saw nevertheless
occasion to anticipate and guard against “complaints of obscurity,” as
often as he was to trace his subject “to the highest well-spring and
fountain.” Which, (continues he) “because men are not accustomed to, the
pains we take are more needful a great deal, than acceptable; and the
matters we handle, seem by reason of newness (till the mind grow better
acquainted with them) dark and intricate.” I would gladly therefore
spare both myself and others this labour, if I knew how without it
to present an intelligible statement of my poetic creed,--not as my
opinions, which weigh for nothing, but as deductions from established
premises conveyed in such a form, as is calculated either to effect a
fundamental conviction, or to receive a fundamental confutation. If I
may dare once more adopt the words of Hooker, “they, unto whom we shall
seem tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own
hands to spare that labour, which they are not willing to endure.” Those
at least, let me be permitted to add, who have taken so much pains to
render me ridiculous for a perversion of taste, and have supported the
charge by attributing strange notions to me on no other authority than
their own conjectures, owe it to themselves as well as to me not to
refuse their attention to my own statement of the theory which I do
acknowledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining the grounds on
which I rest it, or the arguments which I offer in its justification.
CHAPTER V
On the law of Association--Its history traced from Aristotle to Hartley.
There have been men in all ages, who have been impelled as by an
instinct to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote their
attempts to its solution. The first step was to construct a table of
distinctions, which they seem to have formed on the principle of the
absence or presence of the Will. Our various sensations, perceptions,
and movements were classed as active or passive, or as media partaking
of both. A still finer distinction was soon established between the
voluntary and the spontaneous. In our perceptions we seem to ourselves
merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the
landscape, or as a blank canvass on which some unknown hand paints it.
For it is worthy of notice, that the latter, or the system of Idealism
may be traced to sources equally remote with the former, or Materialism;
and Berkeley can boast an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi
or Hobbes. These conjectures, however, concerning the mode in which our
perceptions originated, could not alter the natural difference of Things
and Thoughts. In the former, the cause appeared wholly external,
while in the latter, sometimes our will interfered as the producing or
determining cause, and sometimes our nature seemed to act by a mechanism
of its own, without any conscious effort of the will, or even against
it. Our inward experiences were thus arranged in three separate classes,
the passive sense, or what the School-men call the merely receptive
quality of the mind; the voluntary; and the spontaneous, which holds the
middle place between both. But it is not in human nature to meditate on
any mode of action, without inquiring after the law that governs it;
and in the explanation of the spontaneous movements of our being, the
metaphysician took the lead of the anatomist and natural philosopher. In
Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and India the analysis of the mind had reached
its noon and manhood, while experimental research was still in its dawn
and infancy. For many, very many centuries, it has been difficult to
advance a new truth, or even a new error, in the philosophy of the
intellect or morals. With regard, however, to the laws that direct the
spontaneous movements of thought and the principle of their intellectual
mechanism there exists, it has been asserted, an important exception
most honourable to the moderns, and in the merit of which our own
country claims the largest share. Sir James Mackintosh,--(who, amid the
variety of his talents and attainments, is not of less repute for the
depth and accuracy of his philosophical inquiries than for the
eloquence with which he is said to render their most difficult results