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effects require for their production the spontaneous impulses of genius, their first cause, together with the combined and often recondite workings of all the agencies which constitute the intellectual being.
This fact will be evident, if we go, in the first instance, to the very root of the matter, and inquire what are the requisites for an imaginative writer—a term often used in a depreciating sense. By none, however, who thus use it, can the nature of the mind and its faculties be at all understood; for imagination is not an inferior mental power. By its aid are carried on some of the noblest intellectual processes, while it also brings into exercise many of the mind's highest capabilities; it pre-supposes abstraction,—that power which enables the mind to separate from each other objects and qualities; a vivid fancy, to blend them again in new and more striking forms; a keen susceptibility to all sublime and beautiful influences; a refined taste, and a correct judgment to regulate and direct in forming right combinations of ideas. By every imaginative writer these important mental elements must be possessed in a greater or less degree; proportionate to that degree will be, of course, his own grade in the ranks of literature. Hence, therefore, any disparagement of what is termed the imaginative class of minds can proceed only from ignorance.
If we turn from the imaginative mind to the effects which it may originate,—to its works of art,—we shall find a similar want of appreciation, resulting also from ignorance. How few persons, as they gaze on a fine painting, while, perhaps, they may admire the colouring, be pleased with the figures, and interested in the subject, ever dream of the powers and efforts that must have been put in requisition ere that picture could be completed! The science of the
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