cient importance in the human constitution to deserve an appropriated name; and, for this purpose, the word fancy would appear to be the most convenient that our language affords.

Dr. Reid has somewhere observed, that "the part of our constitution on which the association of ideas depends, was called, by the older English writers, the fantasy or fancy;" a use of the word, we may remark, which coincides, in many instances, with that which I propose to make of it. It differs from it only in this, that these writers applied it to the association of ideas in general, whereas I restrict its application to that habit of association, which is subservient to poetical imagination.

According to the explanation which has now been given of the word fancy, the office of this power is to collect materials for the imagination; and, therefore, the latter power presupposes the former, while the former does not necessarily suppose the latter. A man whose habits of association present to him, for illustrating or embellishing a subject, a number of resembling, or of analogous ideas, we call a man of fancy: but for an effort of imagination, various other powers are necessary, particularly the powers of taste and of judgment; without which, we can hope to produce nothing that will be a source of pleasure to others. It is the power of fancy which supplies the poet with metaphorical language, and with all the analogies which are the foundation of his illusions; but it is the power of imagination that creates the complex scenes he describes, and the fictitious characters he delineates. To fancy, we apply the epithets of rich or luxuriant; to imagination, those of beautiful or sublime.*

* [Though the best writers, as Stewart remarks, are seldom steady and precise in the use of two terms so nearly related to each other as fancy and imagination, we think these two faculties may yet be distinguished from each other by a broader line of separation than the one marked out in the text. In fact, the assertion that it is the office of fancy only to furnish the materials for the imagination to work upon, if it be understood to mean, that fancy merely reproduces the sights and sounds, the thoughts and feelings, that were known before, without altering or refashioning them, or

II. Of the principles of association among our ideas. — The facts which I stated in the former Section, to illustrate the tendency of a perception, or of an idea, to suggest ideas related to it, are so obvious as to be matter of common remark. But the relations which connect all our thoughts together, and the laws which regulate their succession, were but little attended to before the publication of Mr. Hume's writings.

combining them anew, is contradicted by the usage both of poets and critics.

and it throws its materials together into combinations so new and fanciful, that the likeness of them cannot be found on the earth or under the earth. A "fancy picture," or a "fancy sketch," is commonly understood to mean an ideal combination of things often found separate in nature, but never before found together. The leading characteristic of such fancy work is, that it is recognized at the moment to be unreal, or fantastic.

But imagination, as Stewart has here pointed out, is accompanied by belief; it is, for the moment, a delusion, or a phrenzy. It' assumes, or takes for granted, the reality of its own creations. Where fancy sees only a resemblance, imagination beholds identity. Hence, the appropriate figure of speech for the one, is a simile; for the other, a metaphor or trope. Donne's witty comparison of husband and wife to a pair of compasses,

is, in itself, purely fanciful; for it is an avowed comparison. But one portion of it, that which we have italicized,—is of imagination all-compact; for one half of the compasses is here not merely fancied to be a human being, but, on the supposition that it is a human being, corresponding affections, purposes, and actions are attributed to it. So, in Shakspeare's magnificent description of daybreak,

'See, love! what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East;
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund Day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops "

the poet's mind is all aglow with imagination, and the most daring prosopopoeia becomes the instinctive language of truth itself.]

It is well known to those who are in the least conversant with the present state of metaphysical science, that this eminent writer has attempted to reduce all the principles of association among our ideas to three: Resemblance, Contiguity in time and place, and Cause and Effect. The attempt was great, and worthy of his genius; but it has been shown by several writers since his time, that his enumeration is not only incomplete, but that it is even indistinct, so far as it goes.

*

It is not necessary for my present purpose, that I should enter into a critical examination of this part of Mr. Hume's system; or that I should attempt to specify those principles of association which he has omitted. Indeed, it does not seem to me, that the problem admits of a satisfactory solution; for there is no possible relation among the objects of our knowledge, which may not serve to connect them together in the mind; and, therefore, although one enumeration may be more comprehensive than another, a perfectly complete enumeration is scarcely to be expected.

Nor is it merely in consequence of the relations among things, that our notions of them are associated: they are frequently coupled together by means of relations among the words which denote them; such as a similarity of sound, or other circumstances still more trifling. The alliteration which is so common in poetry, and in proverbial sayings, seems to arise, partly at least, from associations of ideas founded on the accidental circumstance, of the two words which express them beginning with the same letter.

"But thousands die, without or this or that;

Die, and endow a college, or a cat." - Pope's Ep. to Lord Bathurst. "Ward tried, on puppies and the poor, his drop." — Id. Imitat. of Horace. "Puffs, powders, patches; bibles, billet-doux." - Rape of the Lock.

*It is observed by Dr. Beattie, that something like an attempt to enumerate the laws of association is to be found in Aristotle, who, in speaking of recollection, insinuates, with his usual brevity, that "the relations, by which we are led from one thought to another, in tracing out, or hunting after," as he calls it, "any particular thought which does not immediately occur, are chiefly three, resemblance, contrariety, and contiguity.”

This indeed pleases only on slight occasions, when it may be supposed that the mind is in some degree playful, and under the influence of those principles of association which commonly take place when we are careless and disengaged. Every person must be offended with the second line of the following couplet, which forms part of a very sublime description of the Divine power:·

"Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart."-Essay on Man, Ep. i.

To these observations, it may be added, that things which have no known relation to each other are often associated in consequence of their producing similar effects on the mind. Some of the finest poetical allusions are founded on this principle; and accordingly, if the reader is not possessed of sensibility congenial to that of the poet, he will be apt to overlook their meaning, or to censure them as absurd. To such a critic, it would not be easy to vindicate the beauty of the following stanza, in an ode addressed to a lady by the author of the "Seasons:

"O thou, whose tender, serious eye,
Expressive speaks the soul I love;
The gentle azure of the sky,

The pensive shadows of the grove."

The principles of association divided into two classes. I have already said, that the view of the subject which I propose to take, does not require a complete enumeration of our principles of association. There is, however, an important distinction among them, to which I shall have occasion frequently to refer; and which, as far as I know, has not hitherto attracted the notice of philosophers. The relations upon which some of them are founded, are perfectly obvious to the mind; those which are the foundation of others, are discovered only in consequence of particular efforts of attention. Of the former kind, are the relations of resemblance and analogy, of contrariety, of vicinity in time and place, and those which arise from accidental coincidences in the sound of different words. These, in general, con

nect our thoughts together, when they are suffered to take their natural course, and when we are conscious of little or no active exertion. Of the latter kind, are the relations of cause and effect, of means and end, of premises and conclusion; and those others, which regulate the train of thought in the mind of the philosopher when he is engaged in a particular investigation.

It is owing to this distinction, that transitions, which would be highly offensive in philosophical writing, are the most pleasing of any in poetry. In the former species of composition, we expect to see an author lay down a distinct plan or method, and observe it rigorously; without allowing himself to ramble into digressions, suggested by the accidental ideas or expressions, which may occur to him in his progress. In that state of mind in which poetry is read, such digressions are not only agreeable, but necessary to the effect; and an arrangement founded on the spontaneous and seemingly casual order of our thoughts, pleases more than one suggested by an accurate analysis of the subject.

How absurd would the long digression in praise of industry, in Thomson's "Autumn," appear, if it occurred in a prose essay a digression, however, which, in that beautiful poem, arises naturally and insensibly from the view of a luxuriant harvest; and which as naturally leads the poet back to the point where his excursion began:—

"All is the gift of industry; whate'er
Exalts, embellishes, and renders life

Delightful. Pensive Winter, cheered by him,
Sits at the social fire, and happy hears
Th' excluded tempest idly rave along;

His harden'd fingers deck the gaudy Spring;

Without him Summer were an arid waste;

Nor to th' Autumnal months could thus transmit

Those full, mature, immeasurable stores,

That, waving round, recall my wand'ring song."

In Goldsmith's "Traveller," the transitions are managed with consummate skill; and yet how different from that logical method which would be suited to a philosophical discourse on the state of society in the different parts of Europe! Some of