Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/41

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PREFACE.
xxxiii

styled it, "the aggregative and associative Power," my objection is only that the definition is too general. To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and to combine, belong as well to the Imagination as to the Fancy; but either the materials evoked and combined are different; or they are brought together under a different law, and for a different purpose. Fancy does not require that the materials which she makes use of should be susceptible of change in their constitution, from her touch; and, where they admit of modification, it is enough for her purpose if it be slight, limited, and evanescent. Directly the reverse of these, are the desires and demands of the Imagination. She recoils from every thing but the plastic, the pliant, and the indefinite. She leaves it to Fancy to describe Queen Mab as coming,

"In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the fore-finger of an Alderman."

Having to speak of stature, she does not tell you that her gigantic Angel was as tall as Pom-