ir reality, or on canvas; and besides this mellowing and
softening operation on those it retains, the conceptive faculty has the
power of letting go many of them altogether out of its groups of ideas,
and retaining only those where the meminisse juvabit will apply; and in
this way the entire group of memories becomes altogether delightful; but
of those parts of anything which are in themselves beautiful, I think
the indistinctness no benefit, but that the brighter they are the
better; and that the peculiar charm we feel in conception results from
its grasp and blending of ideas rather than from their obscurity, for we
do not usually recall, as we have seen, one part at a time only of a
pleasant scene, one moment only of a happy day; but together with each
single object we summon up a kind of crowded and involved shadowing
forth of all the other glories with which it was associated, and into
every moment we concentrate an epitome of the day; and it will happen
frequently that even when the visible objects or actual circumstances
are not in numbers remembered; yet the feeling and joy of them is
obtained we know not how or whence, and so with a kind of conceptive
burning glass we bend the sunshine of all the day, and the fulness of
all the scene upon every point that we successively seize; and this
together with more vivid action of fancy, for I think that the wilful
and playful seizure of the points that suit her purpose and help her
springing, whereby she is distinguished from simple conception, takes
place more easily and actively with the memory of things than in
presence of them. But, however this be, and I confess that there is much
that I cannot satisfactorily to myself unravel with respect to the
nature of simple conception; it is evident that this agreeableness,
whatever it be, is not by art attainable, for all art is in some sort
realization; it may be the realization of obscurity or indefiniteness,
but still it must differ from the mere conception of obscurity and
indefiniteness; so that whatever emotions depend absolutely on
imperfectness of conception, as the horror of Milton's Death, cannot be
rendered by art, for art can only lay hold of things which have shape,
and destroys by its touch the fearfulness or pleasurableness of those
which shape have none.

Sec. 4. But gives to the imagination its regardant power over them.

But on this indistinctness of conception, itself comparatively valueless
and unaffec