Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatick, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact ; One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ; That is, the madman : the lover, all as frantick,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ;
And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation, and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination ; That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or, in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear !" The best commentary on this is again to be found in the pages of that acute and original thinker, the author of the “Characteristics,” who directly traces the origin of insanity to this very excess of the imaginative faculty uncorrected by the judgment.
“This, indeed, is but too certain ; that as long as we enjoy a mind, as long as we have appetites and sense, the fancy's of all kinds will be hard at work; and whether we are in company or alone, they must range still, and be active. They
must have their field. The question is, whether they shall have it wholly to themselves ; or whether they shall ac knowledge some controuler or manager. If none, ’tis this I fear which leads to madness. 'Tis this, and nothing else which can be call'd madness, or loss of reason. For if fancy
be left judge of anything, she must be judge of all. Everything is right, if anything be so, because I fancy it. ‘The house turns round. The prospect turns. No, but my head turns indeed, ‘I have a giddiness; that's all. Fancy would persuade me thus and thus, but I know better.'
'Tis by means there
fore of a controuler and corrector of fancy, that I am saved from being mad. Otherwise, ’tis the house turns, when I am giddy. 'Tis things which change (for so I must suppose) when my passion merely or temper changes. But I was out
