Distinction between imagination and fancy

This freshness, however, is not to be taken for an infallible sign of imagination, inasmuch as it results also from a vivid operation of fancy, whose parallel function to this division of the imaginative faculty it is here necessary to distinguish. art oil painting for sale
I believe it will be found that the entirely unimaginative mind sees nothing of the object it has to dwell upon or describe, and is therefore utterly unable, as it is blind itself, to set anything before the eyes of the reader.
The fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear, brilliant, and full of detail. canvas paintings for sale
The imagination sees the heart and inner nature, and makes them felt, but is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted, in its giving of outer detail.
Take an instance. A writer with neither imagination nor [Page 167]fancy, describing a fair lip, does not see it, but thinks about it, and about what is said of it, and calls it well-turned, or rosy, or delicate, or lovely, or afflicts us with some other quenching and chilling epithet. Now hear fancy speak,—

"Her lips were red, and one was thin, 

Compared with that was next her chin, 

Some bee had stung it newly."

The real, red, bright being of the lip is there in a moment But it is all outside; no expression yet, no mind. Let us go a step farther with Warner, of fair Rosamond struck by Eleanor. abstract oil paintings on canvas

"With that she dashed her on the lips 

So dyed double red; 

Hard was the heart that gave the blow, 

Soft were those lips that bled."

The tenderness of mind begins to mingle with the outside color, the imagination is seen in its awakening. Next Shelley,— abstract oil paintings for sale

"Lamp of life, thy lips are burning 

Through the veil that seems to hide them, 

As the radiant lines of morning 

Through thin clouds, ere they divide them."

There dawns the entire soul in that morning; yet we may stop if we choose at the image still external, at the crimson clouds. The imagination is contemplative rather than penetrative. Last, hear Hamlet,—
"Here hung those lips that I have kissed, I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?" abstract oil painting on canvas
There is the essence of lip, and the full power of the imagination.
Again, compare Milton's flowers in Lycidas with Perdita's. In Milton it happens, I think, generally, and in the case before us most certainly, that the imagination is mixed and broken with fancy, and so the strength of the imagery is part of iron and part of clay.

"Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies	(Imagination)
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,	(Nugatory)
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,—	(Fancy)
The glowing violet,	(Imagination)
The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine,	(Fancy, vulgar)
With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head,	(Imagination)
And every flower that sad embroidery wears."	(Mixed)

Then hear Perdita:—

"O, Proserpina,  modern abstract oil painting

For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall 

From Dis's wagon. Daffodils 

That come before the swallow dares, and take 

The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim, 

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 

Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses 

That die unmarried, ere they can behold 

Bright Phœbus in his strength, a malady 

Most incident to maids."

Observe how the imagination in these last lines goes into the very inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all at first with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's; and gilded them with celestial gathering, and never stops on their spots, or their bodily shape, while Milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper-staining would have been the most precious to us of all. "There is pansies, that's for thoughts."  oil painting