health, perhaps, which has invalidated her original Will- diverted her from proper individuality of purpose and seduced her into the sin of imitation. Thus, what she might have done, we cannot altogether determine. What she has actually accomplished is before us. With Tennyson's works beside her, and a keen appreciation of them in her soul-appreciation too keen to be discriminative ; — with an imagination even more vigorous than his, although somewhat less ethereally delicate; with inferior art and more feeble volition ; she has written poems such as he could not write, but such as he, under her conditions of ill health and seclusion, would have written during the epoch of his pupildom in that school which arose out of Shelley, and from which, over a disgustful gulf of utter incongruity and absurdity, lit only by miasmatic flashes, into the broad open meadows of Natural Art and Divine Genius, he Tennyson is at once bridge and the transition.

the

AMERICAN PROSE WRITers.

No. 2.

N. P. WIL

LIS. NEW VIEWS IMAGINATION FANCY FANTASY HUMOR WIT SARCASM THE PROSE STYLE OF MR. WILLIS.

[Text: Broadway Journal, Jan. 18, 1845.]

In his poetry, and in the matter of his prose, the author of Melanie" and of the " Inklings of Adventure has, beyond doubt, innumerable merits : still, they are merits which he shares with other writers which he possesses in common with Proctor, with Heber, and with Halleck in common with Neal, with Hunt, with Lamb, and with Irving; his prose style, however, is not only a genus per se, but it is his own property in fee simple impartite," and no man living has ever yet set foot upon it except himself.

has been

Now, if any style has been long distinct long markedly and universally peculiar - we must, of course, seek the source of the peculiarity not, as some persons are prone to suppose, in any physical habitude or mannerism not in any quipping and quibbling of phrase not in any twisting of antique conventionalities of expression-not, (to be brief,) in any mere sleight-of-pen trickeries which, at all times, may be more dexterously performed by an observant imitator than by the original quack but in some mental idiosyncrasy, which, unimitated itself because inimitable,

preserves the style which is its medium and its exponent from all danger of imitation.

In the style of Mr. Willis we easily detect this idiosyncrasy. We have no trouble in tracing it home and when we reach it and look it fairly in the face, we recognize it on the instant. It is Fancy.

To be sure there is quite a tribe of Fancies although one half of them never suspected themselves to be such until so told by the metaphysicians but the one

of which we speak has never yet been accredited among men, and we beg pardon of Mr. Willis for the liberty we take in employing the topic of his style, as the best possible vehicle and opportunity for the introduction of this, our protégé, to the consideration of the literary world.

66

Fancy," says the author of " Aids to Reflection," (who aided Reflection to much better purpose in his "Genevieve") Fancy combines Imagination creates. This was intended and has been received, as a distinction ; but it is a distinction without a difference without even a difference of degree. The Fancy as nearly creates as the imagination, and neither at all. Novel conceptions are merely unusual combinations. The mind of man can imagine nothing which does not exist : if it could, it would create not only ideally, but substantially as do the thoughts of God. It may be said -"We imagine a griffin, yet a griffin does not exist." Not the griffin certainly, but its component parts. It is no more than a collation of known limbs features qualities. Thus with all which appears to be a cre

which claims to be new

ation of the intellect : - it is re-soluble into the old.

The wildest effort of the mind cannot stand the test of

the analysis.

We might make a distinction of degree between the fancy and the imagination, in calling the latter the former loftily employed. But experience would prove this distinction to be unsatisfactory. What we feel to be fancy, will be found still fanciful, whatever be the theme which engages it. No subject exalts it into imagination. When Moore is termed a fanciful poet, the epithet is precisely applied; he is. He is fanciful in "Lalla Rookh," and had he written the " Inferno," there he would have been fanciful still for not only is he essentially fanciful, but he has no ability to be anything more, unless at rare intervals by snatches and with effort. What we say of him at this point, moreover, is equally true of all little frisky men, personally considered.

:

The fact seems to be that Imagination, Fancy, Fantasy, and Humor have in common the elements Combination and Novelty. The Imagination is the artist of the four. From novel arrangements of old forms which present themselves to it, it selects only such as are harmonious; the result, of course, is beauty itself using the term in its most extended sense, and as inclusive of the sublime. The pure Imagination chooses, from either beauty or deformity, only the most combinable things hitherto uncombined; the compound as a general rule, partaking (in character) of sublimity or beauty, in the ratio of the respective sublimity or beauty of the things combined which are themselves still to be considered as atomic - that is to say, as previous combinations. But, as often analogously happens in physical chemistry, so not unfrequently does it occur in this chemistry of the intellect, that the admixture of two elements will result in a something that shall have nothing of the quality of

one of them or even nothing of the qualities of either. The range of Imagination is therefore, unlimited. Its materials extend throughout the Universe. Even out of deformities it fabricates that Beauty which is at once its sole object and its inevitable test. But, in general, the richness or force of the matters combined - the facility of discovering combinable novelties worth combining - and the absolute chemical combination" and proportion of the completed mass

are the particulars to be regarded in our estimate of Imagination. It is this thorough harmony of an imaginative work which so often causes it to be undervalued by the undiscriminating, through the character of obviousness which is superinduced. We are apt to find ourselves asking " why is it that these combinations have never been imagined before ?

- when the

Now, when this question does not occur harmony of the combination is comparatively neglected, and when in addition to the element of novelty, there is introduced the sub-element of unexpectedness · when, for example, matters are brought into combination which not only have never been combined, but whose combination strikes us as a difficulty happily overthe result then appertains to the FANCY and is, to the majority of mankind more grateful than the purely harmonious one- although, absolutely, it is less beautiful (or grand) for the reason that it is less harmonious.

come

Carrying its errors into excess for, however enticing, they are errors still, or Nature lies, - Fancy is at length found impinging upon the province of Fantasy. The votaries of this latter delight not only in novelty and unexpectedness of combination, but in the avoidance of proportion. The result is therefore ab