This gift of nature is an imagination inventive in the arts-in the disposition of a picture, in the structure of a poem. It cannot exist without memory, but it uses memory as an instrument with which it produces all its performances. term. It is this which constitutes the charm of conversation, for it is constantly presenting to the mind what mankind are most fond of,-new objects. It paints in vivid colours what men of cold and reserved temperament hardly sketch; In consequence of having seen that a it employs the most striking circumlarge stone which the hand of a man stances; it cites the most appropriate could not move, might be moved by examples; and when this talent displays means of a staff, active imagination in- itself in union with the modesty and vented levers, and afterwards compound simplicity which become and adorn all moving forces, which are no other than talents, it conciliates to itself an empire disguised levers. It is necessary to figure over society. Man is so completely a in the mind the machines with their vari-machine, that wine sometimes produces ous effects and processes, in order to the actual production of them. this imagination, as intoxication destroys it. This is a topic to excite at once humiliation and wonder. How can it happen that a small quantity of a certain liquor, which would prevent a man from effecting an important calculation, shall at the same time bestow on him the most brilliant ideas? It is not this description of imagination that is called by the vulgar the enemy of judgment. On the contrary, it can only act in union with profound judgment; it incessantly combines its pictures, corrects its errors, and raises all its edifices according to calculation and upon a plan. There is an astonishing imagination in practical mathematics; and Archimedes had at least as much imagination as Homer. It is by this power that a poet creates his personages, appropriates to them characters and manners, invents his fable, presents the exposition of it,picturesque expressions and sublime meconstructs its complexity, and prepares its development: a labour, all this, requiring judgment the most profound and the most delicately discriminative. It is in poetry particularly that this imagination of detail and expression ought to prevail. It is always agreeable, but there it is necessary. In Homer, Virgil, and Horace, almost all is imagery, without even the reader's perceiving it. Tragedy requires fewer images, fewer taphors and allegories, than the epic poem and the ode; but the greater part of these beauties, under discreet and able management, produce an admirable effect in tragedy; they should never, however, be forced, stiltish, or gigantic. Active imagination, which constitutes men poets, confers on them enthusiasm, according to the true meaning of the A very high degree of art is necessary in all these imaginative inventions, and even in romances. Those which are deficient in this quality are neglected and despised by all minds of natural good taste. An invariably sound judg-Greek word, that internal emotion which ment pervades all the fables of Esop. They will never cease to be the delight of mankind. There is more imagination in the Fairy Tales; but these fantastic imaginations, destitute of order and good sense, can never be in high esteem; they are read childishly, and must be condemned by reason. The second part of active imagination is that of detail, and it is this to which the world distinguishingly applies the in reality agitates the mind and transforms the author into the personage whom he introduces as the speaker; for such is the true enthusiasm, which consists in emotion and imagery. An author under this influence says precisely what would be said by the character he is exhibiting. Less imagination is admissible in eloquence than in poetry. The reason is obvious;-ordinary discourse should be less remote from common ideas. The tor speaks the language of all; the foundation of the poet's performance is fiction. Accordingly, imagination is the essence of his art: to the orator it is only an accessary. Particular traits or touches of imagination have, it is observed, added great beauties to painting. That artifice especially is often cited, by which the artist covers with a veil the head of Agamemnon at the sacrifice of Iphigenia; an expedient, nevertheless, far less beautiful than if the painter had possessed the secret of exhibiting in the countenance of Agamemnon the conflict between the grief of a father, the majesty of a monarch, and the resignation of a good man to the will of heaven; as Rubens had the skill to paint in the looks and attitude of Mary of Medicis the pain of childbirth, the joy of being delivered of a son, and the maternal affection with which she looks upon her child.. names and dates does not possess that storehouse of materials from which he can derive compound images. Men occupied in calculation, or with intricate matters of business, have generally a very barren imagination. When imagination is remarkably stirring and ardent, it may easily degenerate into madness; but it has been observed, that this morbid affection of the organs of the brain more frequently attaches to those passive imaginations which are limited to receiving strong impressions of objects, than to those fervent and active ones which collect and combine ideas; for this active imagination always requires the association of judgment, the other is independent of it. It is not perhaps useless to add to this essay, that by the words perception, me-' mory, imagination, and judgment, we do not mean distinct and separate organs, one of which has the gift of perceiving, In general, the imaginations of painters another of recollecting, the third of imawhen they are merely ingenious, contri-gining, and the last of judging. Men bute more to exhibit the learning in the artist than to increase the beauty of the art. All the allegorical compositions in the world are not worth the masterly execution and fine finish which constitute the true value of paintings. are more inclined than some are aware to consider these as completely distinct and separate faculties. It is however one and the same being that performs all these operations, which we know only by their effects, without being able to know anything of that being itself. SECTION II. Brutes possess imagination as well as ourselves; your dog, for example, hunts his dreams. In all the arts, the most beautiful imagination is always the most natural. The false is that which brings together objects incompatible; the extravagant paints objects which have no analogy, allegory, or resemblance. A strong imagination ex-in plores everything to the bottom; a weak one skims over the surface; the placid one reposes in agreeable pictures; the ardent one piles images upon images. The judicious or sage imagination is that which employs with discrimination all these different characters, but which rarely admits the extravagant and always rejects the false. "Objects are painted in the fancy," says Descartes, as others have also said. Certainly they are; but what is the fancy, and how are objects painted in it? Is it with "the subtle matter?" How can I tell? is the appropriate answer to all questions thus affecting the first principles of human organization. Nothing enters the understanding withIf memory nourished and exercised be out an image. It was necessary, in orthe source of all imagination, that same der to our obtaining the confused idea we faculty of memory, when overcharged, possess of infinite space, that we should becomes the extinction of it. Accord-have an idea of a space of a few feet. ingly, the man whose head is full of It is necessary, in order to our having the VOL. II.-65 E idea of God, that the image of something more powerful than ourselves should have long dwelt upon our minds. these personages the eloquence or diction appropriate to their rank, suitable to their station. Here is the great art and difficulty; but even after doing this they have 3. The imagination in the expression, by which every word paints an image in the mind without astonishing or over{whelming it; as in Virgil: We do not create a single idea or image. I defy you to create one. Ari-not done enough. osto did not make Astolpho travel to the moon till long after he had heard of the moon, of St. John, and of the Paladins. We make no images; we only collect and combine them. The extravagancies of the Thousand and One Nights and the Fairy Tales are merely combinations. He who comprises most images in the storehouse of his memory, is the person who possesses most imagination. Remigium alarum. E neid, vi. 19. Moerentem abjungens fraterna morte juvencum. Georgics, iii, 517. Velorum pandimus alas. Pendent circum oscula nat. Eneid, iij. 520. Georgics i. 523 Immortale jecur tundens fecundaque poenis Et caligantem nigra formidine lucum. Georgies iv. 468. Fata vocant, couditque natantia lomina someus. Virgil is full of these picturesque ex The difficulty is in not bringing together these images in profusion, without any selection. You might employ a whole day in representing, without any toilsome effort, and almost without any attention, a fine old man with a long beard, clothed in ample drapery, and borne in the midst of a cloud resting on chubby children with beautiful wings at-pressions, with which he enriched the tached to their shoulders, or upon an eagle of immense size and grandeur; all the gods and animals surrounding him; golden tripods running to arrive at his council; wheels revolving by their own self-motion, advancing as they revolve; having four faces covered with eyes, ears, tongues, and noses; and between these tripods and wheels an immense multitude of dead resuscitated by the crash of thunder; the celestial spheres dancing and joining in harmonious concert, &c., &c. The lunatic asylum abounds in such imaginations. Latin language, and which are so difficult to be translated into our European jargons,-the crooked and lame offspring of a well-formed and majestic sire, but which however have some merit of their own, and have done some tolerably good things in their way. An There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. inventor must begin with painting correctly in his mind the figure, the machine invented by him, and its properties or effects. We repeat there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer. We may, on the subject of imagination, distinguish,—1. The imagination As the imagination of a great mathewhich disposes the events of a poem, ro- matician must possess extreme precision, mance, tragedy, or comedy, and which so must that of a great poet be exceedattaches the characters and passions to ingly correct and chaste. He must nethe different personages. This requires ver present images that are incompatible the profoundest judgment and the most with each other, incoherent, highly exagexquisite knowledge of the human heart;gerated, or unsuitable to the nature of the talents absolutely indispensible; but with subject. which, however, nothing has yet been done but merely laying the foundation of the cdifice. 2. The imagination which gives to all The great fault of some writers who have appeared since the age of Louis XIV. is, attempting a constant display of imagination, and fatiguing the reader by IMPIOUS. the profuse abundance of far-fetched and appalling meetings of presumed sorimages and double rhymes, one half ofcerers. which may be pronounced absolutely useless. It is this which is at length broughtinto neglect and obscurity a number of small poems, such as Ver Vert, The Chartreuse, and The Shades, which at one period possessed considerable celebrity. Mere sounding superfluity soon finds oblivion. Umpe supervacuum pleno de pectore manat. WHO is the impious man? It is he who exhibits the Being of Beings, the great former of the world, the eternal intelligence by whom all nature is governed, with a long white beard, and having hands and feet. He, however, is pardonable for his impiety; a weak and ignorant creature, the sight or conduct of whom we ought not to allow to provoke or to vex us. The impious man, who ascribes to the heing of beings absurd predictions and absolute iniquities, would certainly pro The active and the passive imagination have been distinguished in the Encyclo- If he should even paint that great and pedia. The active is that of which we incomprehensible being as carried on a have treated. It is the talent of forming cloud, which can carry nothing; if he is new pictures out of all those contained in so stupid as to place God in a mist, in our memory. rain, or on a mountain, and to surround The passive is scarcely anything be-him with little round, chubby, painted yond memory itself, even in a brain under faces, accompanied by two wings,-I strong emotion. A man of an active and can smile, and pardon him with all my fervent imagination, a preacher of the heart. League in France, or a puritan in England, harangues the populace with a voice of thunder, with an eye of fire, and the gesture of a demoniac, and repre-voke me, if that great being had not besents Jesus Christ as demanding justice of the Eternal Father for the new wounds he has received from the royalists, for the nails which have been driven for the second time through his feet and hands by these impious miscreants. Avenge, Oable and just in the great being; that his God the Father, avenge the blood of God the Son; march under the banner of the Holy Spirit: it was formerly a dove, but is now an eagle bearing thun-{ der! The passive imaginations, roused and stimulated by these images, by the voice, by the action of those sanguinary empirics, urge the maddening hearers to rush with fury from the chapel or meet-mouth? ing-house, to kill their opponents and get themselves hanged. Persons of passive imaginations, for the sake of high and violent excitement, go sometimes to the sermon and sometimes to the play; sometimes to the place of execution; and sometimes even to what they suppose to be the midnight stowed upon me the gift of reason to control my anger. This senseless fanatic repeats to me once more what thousands of others have said before him, that it is not our province to decide what is reason reason is not like our reason, nor his justice like our justice. What then, my rather too absurd and zealous friend, would you really wish me to judge of justice and reason by any other notions than I have of them myself? Would you have me walk otherwise than with my feet, or speak otherwise than with my The impious man, who supposes the great being to be jealous, proud, malignant, and vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not sleep under the same roof with such a man. But how will you treat the impious man, the daring blasphemer, who says to you-See only with my eyes; do not Do you not feel a very strong inclination to beat this cruel blasphemer? and, even if you happen to be born with a meek and forgiving spirit, would you not fly with the utmost speed to the west, { when this barbarian utters his atrocious reveries in the east? name of kingdoms are really republics, every individual is taxed according to his means and the wants of society. In despotic kingdoms or to speak more politely-in monarchical states, it is not quite the same-the nation is taxed without consulting it. An agriculturist who has twelve hundred livres of revenue, is quite astonished when four hundred are demanded of him. There are several who are even obliged to pay more than half of what they receive. The cultivator demands why the half of his fortune is taken from him to pay soldiers, when the hundredth part would With respect to another and very dif-suffice. He is answered that, besides ferent class of the impious,-those who, while washing their elbows, neglect to turn their faces towards Aleppo and Erivan, or who do not kneel down in the dirt on seeing a procession of capuchin friars at Perpignan, they are certainly culpable; but I hardly think they ought to be impaled. IMPOST. SECTION I. the soldiers, he must pay for luxury and the arts; that nothing is lost; and that in Persia towns and villages are assigned to the queen to pay for her girdles, slippers, and pins. He replies, that he knows nothing of the history of Persia, and that he should be very indignant if half his fortune was taken for girdles, pins, and shoes; that he would furnish them from a better market, and that he endures a grievous imposition. He is made to hear reason by being put into a dungeon, and having his goods put up to sale. If he resists the tax-collectors whom the New Testament has damned, he is hanged,-which renders all his neighbours infinitely accommodat So many philosophical works have been written on the nature of impost, that we need say very little about it here. It is true, that nothing is less philosophical than this subject; but it may enter into moral philosophy by representing to a superintendant of finances or to a Turkish Teftardar, that it accords noting. with universal morals to take his neighbour's money; and that all receivers and custom-house officers and collectors of taxes are cursed in the gospel. Cursed as they are, it must however be agreed, that it is impossible for society to subsist unless each member pays something towards the expense of it; and as, since every one ought to pay, it is necessary to have a receiver, we do not see why this receiver is to be cursed and regarded as an idolater. There is certainly no idolatry in receiving money of guests to day for their supper. In republics, and states which with the Were this money employed by the sovereign in importing spices from India, coffee from Mocha, English and Arabian horses, silks from the Levant, and gewgaws from China, it is clear that in a few years there would not remain a single sous in the kingdom. The taxes, therefore, serve to maintain the manufacturers; and so far what is poured into the coffers of the prince returns to the cultivators. They suffer, they complain, and other parts of the state suffer and complain also; but at the end of the year they find that every one has laboured and lived some way or other. |