Again, it is impossible to tell whether the two nearest trunks of the Aesacus and Hesperie of the Liber Studiorum, especially the large one on the right with the ivy, have been invented, or taken straight from nature, they have all the look of accurate portraiture. I can hardly imagine anything so perfect to have been obtained except from the real thing; but we know that the imagination must have begun to operate somewhere, we cannot tell where, since the multitudinous harmonies of the rest of the picture could hardly in any real scene have continued so inviolately sweet. The final tests, therefore, of the work of associative imagination are its intense simplicity, its perfect harmony, and its absolute truth. It may be a harmony, majestic, or humble, abrupt, or prolonged, but it is always a governed and perfect whole, evidencing in all its relations the weight, prevalence, and universal dominion of an awful, inexplicable Power; a chastising, animating, and disposing Mind. FOOTNOTES [50] Compare Chapter IV. of this Section. [51] On the distinction rightly made by the metaphysicians between conception absolute and conception accompanied by reference to past time, (or memory,) it is of no necessity here to insist. [52] Elements of Chemistry, by the late Edward Turner, M.D. Part II. Sec. IV. [53] This ray of light, however, has an imaginative power of another kind presently to be spoken of. Compare Chap. IV. Sec. 18. [54] Compare Chap. III. Sec.30. [55] It is said at Venice that Titian took the trees of the St. Pietro Martiere out of his garden opposite Murano. I think this unlikely; there is something about the lower trunks that has a taint of composition: the thought of the whole, however, is thoroughly fine. The backgrounds of the frescoes at Padua are also very characteristic, and the well-known woodcut of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, one of the mightiest of existing landscape thoughts; and yet it is pure portraiture of pine and Spanish chestnut. CHAPTER III. OF IMAGINATION PENETRATIVE. Sec. 1. Imagination penetrative is concerned not with the combining but apprehending of things. Thus far we have been defining that combining operation of the imagination, which appears to be in a sort mechanical, yet takes place in the same inexplicable modes, whatever be the order of conception submitted to it, though I chose to illustrate it by its dealings with mere matter before taking cognizance of any nobler subjects of imagery. We must now examine the dealing of the imagination with its separate conceptions, and endeavor to understand not only its principles of selection, but its modes of apprehension with respect to what it selects. Sec. 2. Milton's and Dante's description of flame.