ng, or, as my friend Mr. Coleridge has styled it,
'the aggregative and associative power,' my objection is only that the
definition is too general. To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and
to combine, belong as well to the Imagination as to the Fancy; but
either the materials evoked and combined are different; or they are
brought together under a different law, and for a different purpose.
Fancy does not require that the materials which she makes use of should
be susceptible of change in their constitution, from her touch; and,
where they admit of modification, it is enough for her purpose if it be
slight, limited, and evanescent. Directly the reverse of these, are the
desires and demands of the Imagination. She recoils from everything but
the plastic, the pliant, and the indefinite. She leaves it to Fancy to
describe Queen Mab as coming,

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman.

Having to speak of stature, she does not tell you that her gigantic
Angel was as tall as Pompey's Pillar; much less that he was twelve
cubits, or twelve hundred cubits high; or that his dimensions equalled
those of Teneriffe or Atlas;--because these, and if they were a million
times as high it would be the same, are bounded: The expression is, 'His
stature reached the sky!' the illimitable firmament!--When the
Imagination frames a comparison, if it does not strike on the first
presentation, a sense of the truth of the likeness, from the moment that
it is perceived, grows--and continues to grow--upon the mind; the
resemblance depending less upon outline of form and feature, than upon
expression and effect; less upon casual and outstanding, than upon
inherent and internal, properties: moreover, the images invariably
modify each other.--The law under which the processes of Fancy are
carried on is as capricious as the accidents of things, and the effects
are surprising, playful, ludicrous, amusing, tender, or pathetic, as the
objects happen to be appositely produced or fortunately combined. Fancy
depends upon the rapidity and profusion with which she scatters her
thoughts and images; trusting that their number, and the felicity with
which they are linked together, will make amends for the want of
individual value: or she prides herself upon the curious subtilty 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
he