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 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,
They are the tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.

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.

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 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 _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