original and striking will be the decorations produced.'--_British
Synonyms discriminated, by W. Taylor_.

Is not this as if a man should undertake to supply an account of a
building, and be so intent upon what he had discovered of the
foundation, as to conclude his task without once looking up at the
superstructure? Here, as in other instances throughout the volume, the
judicious Author's mind is enthralled by Etymology; he takes up the
original word as his guide and escort, and too often does not perceive
how soon he becomes its prisoner, without liberty to tread in any path
but that to which it confines him. It is not easy to find out how
imagination, thus explained, differs from distinct remembrance of
images; or fancy from quick and vivid recollection of them: each is
nothing more than a mode of memory. If the two words bear the above
meaning and no other, what term is left to designate that faculty of
which the Poet is 'all compact;' he whose eye glances from earth to
heaven, whose spiritual attributes body forth what his pen is prompt in
turning to shape; or what is left to characterise Fancy, as insinuating
herself into the heart of objects with creative activity? Imagination,
in the sense of the word as giving title to a class of the following
Poems, has no reference to images that are merely a faithful copy,
existing in the mind, of absent external objects; but is a word of
higher import, denoting operations of the mind upon those objects and
processes of creation or of composition, governed by certain fixed laws.
I proceed to illustrate my meaning by instances. A parrot _hangs_ from
the wires of his cage by his beak or by his claws; or a monkey from the
bough of a tree by his paws or his tail. Each creature does so literally
and actually. In the first Eclogue of Virgil, the shepherd, thinking of
the time when he is to take leave of his farm, thus addresses his
goats:--

Non ego vos posthac viridi projectus in antro
Dumosa _pendere_ procul de rupe videbo.

--half way down
_Hangs_ one who gathers samphire,

is the well-known expression of Shakspeare, delineating an ordinary
image upon the cliffs of Dover. In these two instances is a slight
exertion of the faculty which I denominate imagination, in the use of
one word: neither the goats nor the samphire-gatherer do literally hang,
as does the parrot or the monkey; but, presenting to the senses
something of such an appearance, t