In that from Scott,[70]--the fancy, led away by the outside resemblance
of floating form and hue to the banners, loses the feeling and
possession of the scene, and places herself in circumstances of
character completely opposite to the quietness and grandeur of the
natural objects; this would have been unjustifiable, but that the
resemblance occurs to the mind of the monarch, rather than to that of
the poet; and it is that, which of all others, would have been the most
likely to occur at the time; in this point of view it has high
imaginative propriety. Of the same fanciful character is that
transformation of the tree trunks into dragons noticed before in
Turner's Jason; and in the same way this becomes imaginative as it
exhibits the effect of fear in disposing to morbid perception. Compare
with it the real and high action of the imagination on the same matter
in Wordsworth's Yew trees (which I consider the most vigorous and solemn
bit of forest landscape ever painted):--
"Each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine,
Up coiling and inveterately convolved,
_Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane_."
It is too long to quote, but the reader should refer to it: let him note
especially, if painter, that pure touch of color, "by sheddings from the
pining umbrage tinged."
In the same way, the blasted trunk on the left, in Turner's drawing of
the spot where Harold fell at the battle of Hastings, takes, where its
boughs first separate, the shape of the head of an arrow; this, which is
mere fancy in itself, is imagination as it supposes in the spectator an
excited condition of feeling dependent on the history of the spot.
Sec. 7. Morbid or nervous fancy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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