" [WESTMINSTER REVIEW, No. cxxxi., p. 27]. It is obvious
that if Young had imagined the position he assigned to the good man he
would have seen its absurdity; instead of imagining, he allowed the
vague transient suggestion of half-nascent images to shape themselves
in verse.
Now compare with this a passage in which imagination is really active.
Wordsworth recalls how--
" In November days
When vapours rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among the woods
At noon; and mid the calm of summer nights,
When by the margin of the trembling lake
Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine."
There is nothing very grand or impressive in this passage, and
therefore it is a better illustration for my purpose. Note how happily
the one image, out of a thousand possible images by which November
might be characterised, is chosen to call up in us the feeling of the
lonely scene; and with what delicate selection the calm of summer
nights, the "trembling lake" (an image in an epithet), and the gloomy
hills, are brought before us.
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