of individual value; or she prides herself upon the curious subtlety and the successful elaboration with which she can detect their lurking affinities. If she can win you over to her purpose, and impart to you her feelings, she cares not how unstable or transitory may be her influence, knowing that it will not be out of her power to resume it upon an apt occasion. But the imagination is conscious of an indestructible dominion;-the soul may fall away from it, not being able to sustain its grandeur; but, if once felt and acknowledged, by no act of any other faculty of the mind can it be relaxed, impaired, or diminished. Fancy is given to quicken and to beguile the temporal part of our nature, imagination to incite and to support the eternal. Yet is it not the less true that fancy, as she is an active, is also, under her own laws and in her own spirit, a creative faculty. In what manner fancy ambitiously aims at a rivalship with imagination, and imagination stoops to work with the materials of fancy, might be illustrated from the compositions of all eloquent writers, whether in prose or verse; and chiefly from those of our own country. Scarcely a page of the impassioned parts of Bishop Taylor's 23 Works can be opened that shall not afford examples. Referring the reader to those inestimable volumes, I will content myself 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, After the transgression of Adam, Milton, with other appearances of sympathizing nature, thus marks the immediate consequence, Sky lowered, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops Wept at completion of the mortal sin."4 The associating link is the same in each instance: dew and rain, not distinguishable from the liquid substance of tears, are employed as indications of sorrow. A flash 28 Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). 24 Paradise Lost, ix, 1002-03. 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 from 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 "Earth had before trembled from her entrails, and Nature given a second groan." Finally, I will refer to Cotton's 25 Ode upon Winter, an admirable composition, though stained with some peculiarities of the age in which he lived, for a general illustration of the characteristics of fancy. The middle part of this ode contains a most lively description of the entrance of Winter, with his retinue, as "a palsied king," and yet a military monarch,-advancing for conquest with his army; the several bodies of which, and their arms and equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, and a profusion of fanciful comparisons, which indicate on the part of the poet extreme activity of intellect, and a correspondent hurry of delightful feeling. Winter retires from the foe into his fortress, where a magazine Of sovereign juice is cellared in; Though myself a water-drinker, I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing what follows, as an instance still more happy of fancy employed in the treatment of feeling than, in its preceding passages, the poem supplies of her management of forms. "Tis that, that gives the poet rage, It lays the careful head to rest, 25 Charles Cotton (1630-1687). Then let the chill Sirocco blow, And make the hollow mountains roar, Whilst we together jovial sit Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit, We'll think of all the friends we know, But where friends fail us, we'll supply We'll drink the wanting into wealth, The worthy in disgrace shall find The brave shall triumph in success Thus shall our healths do others good, When I sat down to write this preface, it was my intention to have made it more comprehensive; but, thinking that I ought rather to apologize for detaining the reader so long, I will here conclude. ADVICE TO A YOUNG REVIEWER EDWARD COPLESTON [Copleston was elected Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, when only nineteen years of age, in 1795, and Professor of Poetry in the University when twenty-six. This brilliant ironic skit was published anonymously at Oxford in 1807; the full title was Advice to a Young Reviewer, with a Specimen of the Art (see note at the close). The late John Churton Collins writes of it as follows: "It was immediately inspired, not, as is commonly supposed, by the critiques in the Edinburgh Review, but by the critiques in the British Critic, a periodical founded in 1793, and exceedingly influential between that time and about 1812. Archbishop Whately, correcting a statement in the Life of Copleston by W. J. Copleston, says that it was occasioned by a review of Mant's poems in the British Critic. (Whately's Reminiscences of Bishop Copleston, p. 6.) But on referring to the review of these poems, which appeared in the November number of 1806,-plainly the review referred to, we find nothing in it to support Whately's assertion. That the reviews in the British Critic are, however, what Copleston is parodying in the critique of 'L'Allegro' is abundantly clear; but what he says about voyages and travels and about science and recondite learning appear to have reference to articles particularly characteristic of the Edinburgh Review. It was not, however, till after the date of Copleston's parody that the Edinburgh Review began conspicuously to illustrate what Copleston here satirises; it was not till a time more recent still that periodical literature generally exemplified in literal seriousness what Copleston intended as extravagant irony. . . This brochure is evidently modelled on Swift's 'Digression Concerning Critics' in the third section of the Tale of a Tub, and owes something also to the Treatise on the Bathos' in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies, as the title may have been suggested by Shaftesbury's Advice to an Author." (Introduction to Critical Essays and Literary Fragments, New English Garner Series.)] You are now about to enter on a profession which has the means of doing much good to society, and scarcely any temptation to do harm. You may encourage genius, you may chastise superficial arrogance, expose falsehood, correct error, and guide the taste and opinions of the age in no small degree by the books you praise and recommend. And this too may be done without running the risk of making any enemies, or subjecting yourself to be called to account for your criticism, however severe. While your name is unknown, your person is invulnerable at the same time your aim is sure, for you may take it at your leisure; and your blows fall heavier than those of any writer whose name is given, or who is simply anonymous. There is a mysterious authority in the plural We, which no single name, whatever may be its reputation, can acquire; and, under the sanction of this imposing style, your strictures, your praise, and your dogmas will command universal attention, and be received as the fruit of united talents acting on one common principle, as the judgments of a tribunal who decide only on mature deliberation, and who protect the interests of literature with unceasing vigilance. Such being the high importance of that office, and such its opportunities, I cannot bestow a few hours of leisure better than in furnishing you with some hints for the more easy and effectual discharge of it; hints which are, I confess, loosely thrown together, but which are the result of long experience, and of frequent reflection and comparison. And if anything should strike you, at first sight, as rather equivocal in point of morality, or deficient in liberality and feeling, I beg you will suppress all such scruples, and consider them as the offspring of a contracted education and narrow way of thinking, which a little intercourse with the world and sober reasoning will speedily overcome. Now, as in the conduct of life nothing is more to be desired than some governing principle of action, to which all other principles and motives must be made subservient, so in the art of reviewing I would lay down as a fundamental position, which you must never lose sight of, and which must be the mainspring of all your criticismsWrite what will sell! To this Golden Rule every minor canon must be subordinate, and must be either immediately deducible from it or at least be made consistent with it. Be not staggered at the sound of a precept which, upon examination, will be found as honest and virtuous as it is discreet. I have already sketched out the great |