200 OF IMAGINATION AND FANCY HUMOUR From thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure, THE relation of fancy and wit has been often remarked. It is indeed so striking that the same definition will suit both, with the change only of a single adjective; wit consisting in the discovery of a ludicrous, and fancy of a beautiful resemblance between things apparently unlike. In both there is always a comparison expressed or implied, and whenever there is a want of propriety in that comparison, the unsuccessful attempt at either wit or fancy degenerates into oddity or a conceit; of which last abundant examples may be found in the Euphuists and the Concettisti, Sir Philip Sidney or Marino. Wit and fancy often run into each other, and mutually intrude upon their respective provinces, so that it is sometimes hard to determine, on meeting with a comparison of peculiar liveliness, whether it should be styled witty or fanciful, and thus it happens that both epithets are occasionally applied to the same expression indiscriminately. Wit occupies the same subordinate position, with respect to the higher or inventive species of humour, that fancy holds with respect to inventive imagination; but wit would seem to be a higher quality than the lower or narrative species of humour, while the inferiority of fancy to the lower or verbal imagination is manifest. We come now to the question of the nature of imagination and humour, and the distinction between imagination and fancy, humour and wit. Of imagination there appear to be two kinds. The first, which we have called inventive, does not mean an agreeable combination of fictitious occurrences, termed a story, for this is simply invention, but a delineation of scenes, not in accordance with the common course of nature, so vivid as to produce on the reader or spectator, (for it applies to painting as well as to poetry,) the temporary impression of their reality; and a conception of supernatural beings so definite, as to satisfy the reader, (this last being the province of the poet only, as the painter can describe but a momentary scene,) that such beings, conceding their existence, might with perfect propriety think, act and speak as the author has represented them. Of this species of poetical imagination, Homer's Tartarus in the Odyssey, great part of the Inferno of Dante, the two first books of the Paradise Lost, the fairies and witches of Shakspeare, and the Mephistopheles of Goethe are among the most striking instances. The last Judgment and the Sybils and Prophets of Michael Angelo, and the Transfiguration and Madonna di San Sisto of Raphael are equally remarkable instances of pictorial imagination; although, as one half only of one kind of imagination can be predicated of painting, it cannot in strictness be termed more than a semi-imaginative art. The second kind of imagination, for the sake of distinction, rather than from any peculiar propriety in the term, may be termed expressive or verbal. As it is the suggestion to the mind of an indistinct image personified, it involves comparison, and is therefore all that fancy is, and something more; for fancy, as we have seen, is a peculiar kind of comparison of things apparently unlike, without personification. Thus we obtain a test whereby the presence of this second species of imagination, one of the most essential elements of the poetical character, can generally be discovered. The distinction is, however, somewhat subtle, and can hardly be made perfectly clear without illustrations. Homer, like most poets of the south, has more fancy than verbal imagination. In inventive ima gination no man ever excelled him; but this is beside our present purpose. His similies are almost always merely fanciful, but he is nevertheless occasionally highly imaginative, as in his description of E'pis, or strife: · “ Ητ ̓ ὀλίγη μὲν πρῶτα κορύσσεται, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα Here the whole of the second line is imaginative, and the words ỏλyn and kopvσσera in the first. The impression on the reader's mind is that of a grand, increasing, indistinct image. In the fine description of Apollo in the first Iliad the only imaginative expression is, dhie VUKTì èoiás," "he went like night," that is silently. But the personification of night is faint; her only attributes are motion, darkness, and silence. 66 There are two finely imaginative lines in the Hippolytus of Euripides, which may be noticed for their striking resemblance to the scriptural expression, "The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it," « Οὐδὲ σκότον φρίσσουσι τὸν ξυνεργάτην, Here there is a double personification, first of darkness as a co-operator or conspirer with the wicked, and afterwards of the beams of the houses, witnesses of their crimes, and feeling such horror at them, as to be almost enabled to speak and reveal them. The finest passage on darkness I remember is in the book of Job: "A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness." Here darkness and light are both dimly personified, but the grandest personification is that of death, of whom we are only told that he has a vast shadow, which is without shape. The following line of Virgil is imaginative, if correct, "Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro;" but as it is not quite clear who the Danube conspired with, Claudian's imitation is finer: "O nimium dilecte Deo, cui militat æther, Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti." Again, the last two lines of the following passage are imaginative,— "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari." Thus nobly rendered by Sir Arthur Gorges, Happy is he that knows the cause of things, And that with dauntless courage treads upon All fear and fate, relentless threatenings, And greedy throat of roaring Acheron." |