s or accidental stains on a wall; or the
forms of clouds, or any other complicated accidents, will set the
imagination to work to coin something out of them, and all paintings in
which there is much gloom or mystery, possess therein a certain
sublimity owing to the play given to the beholder's imagination,
without, necessarily, being in the slightest degree imaginative
themselves. The vacancy of a truly imaginative work results not from
absence of ideas, or incapability of grasping and detailing them, but
from the painter having told the whole pith and power of his subject and
disdaining to tell more, and the sign of this being the case is, that
the imagination of the beholder is forced to act in a certain mode, and
feels itself overpowered and borne away by that of the painter, and not
able to defend itself, nor go which way it will, and the value of the
work depends on the truth, authority, and inevitability of this
suggestiveness, and on the absolute right choice of the critical moment.
Now observe in this work of Turner's, that the whole value of it
depends on the character of curve assumed by the serpent's body; for had
it been a mere semicircle, or gone down in a series of smaller coils, it
would have been in the first case, ridiculous, as false and unlike a
serpent, and in the second, disgusting, nothing more than an exaggerated
viper, but it is that _coming straight_ at the right hand which suggests
the drawing forth of an enormous weight, and gives the bent part its
springing look, that frightens us. Again, remove the light trunk[60] on
the left, and observe how useless all the gloom of the picture would
have been, if this trunk had not given it depth and _hollowness_.
Finally and chiefly, observe that the painter is not satisfied even with
all the suggestiveness thus obtained, but to make sure of us, and force
us, whether we will or no, to walk his way, and not ours, the trunks of
the trees on the right are all cloven into yawning and writhing heads
and bodies, and alive with dragon energy all about us, note especially
the nearest with its gaping jaws and claw-like branch at the seeming
shoulder; a kind of suggestion which in itself is not imaginative, but
merely fanciful, (using the term fancy in that third sense not yet
explained, corresponding to the third office of imagination;) but it is
imaginative in its present use and application, for the painter
addresses thereby that morbid and fearful condition of mi