I. IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF THE READER. "It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. . . . I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,-is not that mine? His wit,-if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit."-EMERSON : Compensation." 66 66 My respiration rose; I felt a rapid fire colouring my face. I was Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred; however, during this perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything, for anyone. The whole had no connection with myself; I sought for nothing around me; I was them, I saw only the objects which existed for them; it was a dream, without being awakened."-MADAME ROLAND'S description of her first reading of Telemachus and Tasso. THE gods need never trouble themselves to bestow a greater gift upon a favourite child than a powerful and healthy imagination. I use Let the word "healthy" as a qualifier, knowing right well, with every student of literary biography, that an untamed imagination, running riot and causing its possessor to indulge in all kinds of freaks, mental and otherwise, is often a curse. there, however, but be mixed with it in its original bestowment a spice of pure and honest reasonableness-a wee grain of the power to look at everyday facts as they are-and the future of the chosen child of the gods is assured.* Without this "wee grain" on board ship the unmanaged sails will prove but playthings for wildest winds, and the craft be thrown on all kinds of perilous rocks; but with it its course will be pursued with ease and harmony; still rapid, but safe. * One is tempted to parody the axiom of the elder Shandy, and to say: "An ounce of judgment, in its proper place, is worth a ton of fancy, running wild." |