the conflux of dialects had supplied to the more homogeneous languages, as
the Greek and German: and which the same cause, joined with accidents of
translation from original works of different countries, occasion in mixed lan
guages like our own. The first and most important point to be proved is, that
two conceptions perfectly distinct are confused under one and the same word,
and (this done) to appropriate that word exclusively to one meaning, and the
synonym (should there be one) to the other. But if (as will be often the case
in the arts and sciences) no synonym exists, we must either invent or borrow
a word. In the present instance the appropriation had already begun and been
legitimated in the derivative adjective: Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley
a very fanciful, mind. If therefore I should succeed in establishing the actual
existence of two faculties generally different, the nomenclature would be at
once determined. To the faculty by which I had characterized Milton we
should confine the term imagination; while the other would be contra
distinguished as fancy. Now were it once fully ascertained that this division is
no less grounded in nature than that of delirium from mania, or Otway's Lutes, lobsters, seas of milk, and ships of amber,2 from Shakespeare's What! have his daughters brought him to this pass?3 or from the preceding apostrophe to the elements, the theory of the fine arts
and of poetry in particular could not, I thought, but derive some additional
and important light. It would in its immediate effects furnish a torch of guid
ance to the philosophical critic, and ultimately to the poet himself. In energetic
minds truth soon changes by domestication into power; and from directing in
the discrimination and appraisal of the product becomes influencive in the
production. To admire on principle is the only way to imitate without loss of
originality. * * *
From Chapter 13
[ON THE IMAGINATION, OR ESEMPLASTIC 4 POWER]
* * 4 * The IMAGINATION, then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is 2. Thomas Otway, in Venice Preserved (1682), 4. Coleridge coined this word and used it to mean wrote 'laurels' in place of 'lobsters' (5.2.151). 'molding into unity.'
3. King Lear 3.4.59.
.
478 / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealize and to unify.
It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and
dead.
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixities and
definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated
from the order of time and space; and blended with, and modified by that
empirical phenomenon of the will which we express by the word CHOICE. But
equally with the ordinary memory it must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.5* * *
Chapter 14
OCCASION OF THE LYRICAL BALLADS, AND THE OBJECTS ORIGINALLY PROPOSED PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION THE ENSUING CONTROVERSY, ITS CAUSES AND ACRIMONY PHILOSOPHIC DEFINITIONS OF A POEM AND POETRY WITH SCHOLIA. 6
During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours,7 our
conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the
power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the
truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying
colors of imagination.8 The sudden charm which accidents of light and shade,
