ion, taking for her share, and for that
which she chooses to dwell upon, the outside sign rather than the
emotion. Note in Macbeth that brilliant instance.

"Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky
And fan our people cold."

The outward shiver and coldness of fear is seized on, and irregularly
but admirably attributed by the fancy to the drift of the banners.
Compare Solomon's Song where the imagination stays not at the outside,
but dwells on the fearful emotion itself?

"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning; fair as the moon, clear
as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"

Sec. 9. Fancy is never serious

Now, if this be the prevailing characteristic of the two faculties, it
is evident that certain other collateral differences will result from
it. Fancy, as she stays at the externals, can never feel. She is one of
the hardest hearted of the intellectual faculties, or rather one of the
most purely and simply intellectual. She cannot be made serious,[59] no
edge-tools but she will play with; whereas the imagination is in all
things the reverse. She cannot be but serious; she sees too far, too
darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, ever to smile. There is something
in the heart of everything, if we can reach it, that we shall not be
inclined to laugh at. The [Greek: anerithmon gelasma] of the sea is on
its surface, not in the deep.

Sec. 10. Want of seriousness the bar to high art at the present time.

And thus there is reciprocal action between the intensity of moral
feeling and the power of imagination; for, on the one hand, those who
have keenest sympathy are those who look closest and pierce deepest, and
hold securest; and, on the other, those who have so pierced and seen the
melancholy deeps of things, are filled with the most intense passion and
gentleness of sympathy. Hence, I suppose that the powers of the
imagination may always be tested by accompanying tenderness of emotion,
and thus, (as Byron said,) there is no tenderness like Dante's, neither
any intensity nor seriousness like his, such seriousness that it is
incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous, but
fuses all down into its white-hot fire; and, on the other hand, I
suppose the chief bar to the action of imagination, and stop to all
greatness in this present age of ours, is its mean and shallow love of
jest and jeer, so that if there be in any good and lofty work a flaw or