To imagine---to form an image--we must have the
numerous relations of things present to the mind, and see the objects
in their actual order. In this we are of course greatly aided by the
mass of organised experience, which allows us rapidly to estimate the
relations of gravity or affinity just as we remember that fire burns
and that heated bodies expand. But be the aid great or small, and the
result victorious or disastrous, the imaginative process is always the
same.
There is a slighter strain on the imagination of the poet, because of
his greater freedom. He is not, like the philosopher, limited to the
things which are, or were. His vision includes things which might be,
and things which never were. The philosopher is not entitled to assume
that Nature sympathises with man; he must prove the fact to be so if he
intend making any use of it ;--we admit no deductions from unproved
assumptions. But the poet is at perfect liberty to assume this; and
having done so, he paints what would be the manifestations of this
sympathy. The naturalist who should describe a hippogriff would incur
the laughing scorn of Europe; but the poet feigns its existence, and
all Europe is delighted when it rises with Astolfo in the air.
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