ual. Wordsworth, who was the first clearly to draw the
distinction between the _fancy_ and the _imagination_, states it as
follows:

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 changes 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 forefinger 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, ... 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.[B]

_Poetical Works, Pref. to Ed. of 1815_, p. 646, app. [T. & H. '51.]

So far as actual images are concerned, both _fancy_ and _imagination_
are limited to the materials furnished by the external world; it is
remarkable that among all the representations of gods or demigods,
fiends and demons, griffins and chimaeras, the human mind has never
invented one organ or attribute that is not presented in human or animal
life; the lion may have a human head and an eagle's wings and claws, but
in the various features, individually, there is absolutely nothing new.
But _imagination_ can transcend the work of _fancy_, and compare an
image drawn from the external world with some