the passage meant, at the beginning of the fourth book, where I can find three expressions only in which this power is shown; the "burnished with golden rind, hung amiable,” of the Hesperian fruit, the "lays forth her purple grape" of the vine, and the "fringed bank with myrtle crowned" of the lake: * and these are not what Stewart meant, but only that accumulation of bowers, groves, lawns, and hillocks, which is not imagination at all, but composition, and that of the commonest kind. Hence if we take any passage in which there is real imagination, we shall find Stewart's hypothesis not only inefficient and obscure, but utterly inapplicable. Take one or two at random.

§ 5. Various instances.

"On the other side,

Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war."

it for any particular purpose, there are defects and redundancies, which art may sometimes, but cannot always correct. But the power of Imagination is unlimited. She can create and annihilate, and dispose at pleasure, her woods, her rocks, and her rivers. Milton, accordingly, would not copy his Eden from any one scene, but would select from each the features which were most eminently beautiful. The power of abstraction enabled him to make the separation, and taste directed him in the selection."

*

1

I ought at once to have explained here what I meant, myself, by imagination; and how these three words gave evidence of it. I meant, and always do mean by it, primarily, the power of seeing anything we describe as if it were real; so that, looking at it as we describe (or paint), points may strike us which will give a vividness to the description that would not have occurred to vague memory, or been easily borrowed from the expressions of other writers. Any ordinary author might have spoken of oranges as golden, of grapes as purple, or of a bank as crowned with myrtle; but the conception is much more distinct and forcible which catches the lustre on the luminous rind, feels the weight of cluster in bending the festooned branches to the ground, or sees, in the distance, the delicate branches becoming a fringe at the lake's border. On the contrary, the mere collection of the most agreeable features from various scenes is in the power of ordinary industry, and is rather the folly of vulgar minds than the strength of distinguished ones. intelligent traveller would ask a landscape-painter to gather for him into one canvas the cascade of Terni, the lake of Nemi, and the promontory of Sestri. [1883.]

1 [Cf. Ruskin's index to Fors Clavigera for 1871 and 1872, s. "Imagination."]

No

(Note that the word incensed is to be taken in its literal and material sense, set on fire.) What taste or judgment was it that directed this combination? or is there nothing more Ethan taste or judgment here?

"Ten paces huge

He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee
His massy spear upstaid; as if on earth
Winds under ground, or waters forcing way,
Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat,
Half-sunk with all his pines.”

"Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,

We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn.”

"Missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray

Through the heaven's wide pathless way;
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.” 1

It is evident that Stewart's explanation utterly fails in all these instances; for there is in them no "combination" whatsoever, but a particular mode of regarding the qualities or appearances of a single thing, illustrated and conveyed to us by the image of another; and the act of imagination, observe, is not the selection of this image, but the mode of regarding the object.

But the metaphysician's definition fails yet more utterly, when we look at the imagination neither as regarding, nor combining, but as penetrating.

"My gracious silence, hail!

Wouldst thou have laugh'd, had I come coffin'd home,

That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,

Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,

And mothers that lack sons." 2

[The quotations are from (1) Paradise Lost, ii. 707; (2) Paradise Lost, vi. 193; (3) Lycidas, 25; (4) Il Penseroso, 65.]

2 [Coriolanus, Act ii. sc. i.]

How did Shakespeare know that Virgilia could not speak? This knowledge, this intuitive and penetrative perception, is still one of the forms, the highest, of imagination, but there is no combination of images here.

Penetrative,

We find, then, that the Imagination has three totally distinct functions. It combines, and by com§ 6. The three operations of the bination creates new forms; but the secret prinImagination: ciple of this combination has not been shown by Associative, the analysts. Again, it treats, or regards, both Contemplative. the simple images and its own combinations in peculiar ways; and, thirdly, it penetrates, analyzes, and reaches truths by no other faculty discoverable. These its three functions, I shall endeavour to illustrate, but not in this order: the most logical mode of treatment would be to follow the order in which commonly the mind works; that is, penetrating first, combining next, and treating or regarding, finally; but this arrangement would be inconvenient, because the acts of penetration and of regard are so closely connected, and so like in their relations to other mental acts, that I wish to examine them consecutively; and the rather, because they have to do with higher subject matter than the mere act of combination, whose distinctive nature, that property which makes it imagination and not composition, it will, I think, be best to explain at setting out, as we easily may, in subjects familiar and material. I shall therefore examine the Imaginative faculty in these three forms; first, as Combining or Associative; secondly, as Analytic or Penetrative; thirdly, as Regardant or Contemplative.

CHAPTER II

OF IMAGINATION ASSOCIATIVE

In order to render our inquiry as easy as possible, we shall consider the dealing of the Associative imagination § 1. of simple with the simplest possible matter,—that is, with Conception. conceptions of material things.

First, therefore, we must define the nature of these conceptions themselves.

After beholding and examining any material object, our knowledge respecting it exists in two different forms. Some facts exist in the brain in a verbal form, as known, but not conceived; as, for instance, that it was heavy or light, that it was eight inches and a quarter long, etc., of which length we cannot have accurate conception, but only such a conception as might attach to a length of seven inches or nine; and which fact we may recollect without any conception of the object at all. Other facts respecting it exist in the brain in a visible form, not always visible, but visible at will, as its being of such a colour, or having such and such a complicated shape: as the form of a rose-bud for instance, which it would be difficult to express verbally, neither is it retained by the brain in a verbal form, but a visible one: that is, when we wish for knowledge of its form for immediate use, we summon up a vision or image of the thing; we do not remember it in words, as we remember the fact that it took so many days to blow, or that it was gathered at such and such a time.

The knowledge of things retained in this visible form is called Conception by the metaphysicians, which term I shall retain; it is inaccurately called Imagination by Taylor, in the passage quoted by Wordsworth in the preface to his

ނ

poems;1 not but that the term Imagination is etymologically and rightly expressive of it, but we want that term for a higher faculty.

§ 2. How connected with verbal knowledge.

There are many questions respecting this faculty of conception of very great interest; such as the exact amount of aid that verbal knowledge renders to visible knowledge (as, for instance, the verbal knowledge that a flower has five, or seven, or ten petals, or that a muscle is inserted at such and such a point of the bone, aids the conception of the flower or the limb); and again, what amount of aid the visible knowledge renders to the verbal; as, for instance, whether any one, being asked a question about some animal or thing which instantly and from verbal knowledge he cannot answer, may have such power of summoning up the image of the animal or thing as to ascertain the fact by actual beholding (which I do not assert, but can conceive to be possible); and again, what is that indefinite and subtle character of the conception itself in most men, which admits not of being by themselves traced or realized, and yet is a sure test of likeness in any representation of the thing; like an intaglio, with a front light on it, whose lines cannot be seen, and yet they will fit one definite form only, and that accurately; these and many other questions it is irrelevant at present to determine,* since to forward our present purpose, it will be well to suppose the conception aided by verbal knowledge to be absolutely perfect; and we will suppose a man to retain such clear image of a large number of the material things he has seen, as to be able to set down any of them on paper, with perfect fidelity and absolute memory † of their most minute features.

In thus setting them down on paper, he works, I suppose, * Compare Chapter IV. of this Section.

† On the distinction rightly made by the metaphysicians between conception absolute, and conception accompanied by reference to past time (or memory), it is of no use here to insist.

[The reference is to the Preface to the edition of 1815. The passage there cited from W. Taylor (British Synonyms Discriminated) is: "A man has imagination in proportion as he can distinctly copy in idea the impressions of sense; it is the faculty which images within the mind the phenomena of sensation."]