wing in itself
when it has invented truly--restless and tormented except when it has
this knowledge, its sense of success or failure is too acute to be
affected by praise or blame. Sympathy it desires--but can do without; of
opinions it is regardless, not in pride, but because it has no vanity,
and is conscious of a rule of action and object of aim in which it
cannot be mistaken; partly, also, in pure energy of desire and longing
to do and to invent more and more, which suffer it not to suck the
sweetness of praise--unless a little, with the end of the rod in its
hand, and without pausing in its march. It goes straight forward up the
hill; no voices nor mutterings can turn it back, nor petrify it from its
purpose.[69]

Sec. 33. And on habitual reference to nature.

Finally, it is evident, that like the theoretic faculty, the imagination
must be fed constantly by external nature--after the illustrations we
have given, this may seem mere truism, for it is clear that to the
exercise of the penetrative faculty a subject of penetration is
necessary; but I note it because many painters of powerful mind have
been lost to the world by their suffering the restless writhing of their
imagination in its cage to take place of its healthy and exulting
activity in the fields of nature. The most imaginative men always study
the hardest, and are the most thirsty for new knowledge. Fancy plays
like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy; but imagination is
a pilgrim on the earth--and her home is in heaven. Shut her from the
fields of the celestial mountains--bar her from breathing their lofty,
sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon her the last bolt of the
tower of famine, and give the keys to the keeping of the wildest surge
that washes Capraja and Gorgona.

FOOTNOTES

[56] Compare Arist. Rhet. III. 11.

[57] For the distinction between fancy and simple conception; see
Chap. IV. Sec. 3.

[58] I take this and the next instance from Leigh Hunt's admirable
piece of criticism, "Imagination and Fancy," which ought to be read
with care, and to which, though somewhat loosely arranged, I may
refer for all the filling up and illustration that the subject
requires. With respect to what has just been said respecting want of
imagination, compare his criticism of Addison's Cato, p. 28. I
cannot, however, confirm his judgment, nor admit his selection of
instances, among painters: he has