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Realities Of Imagination
Realities Of Imagination
Introductory Note
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) was the son of a clergyman from the
West Indies. Like Lamb and Coleridge, he was educated at Christ`s Hospital in
London, and began writing poetry while still a boy. He attracted attention
early by his theatrical criticisms; and in 1808 he joined his brother in
founding a weekly newspaper, the "Examiner." During the thirteen years for
which he contributed to this paper he exerted a wholesome influence in
journalism, raising the tone of the press, showing great independence and
tolerance, and fighting vigorously for liberal principles. He earned the
distinction of two years` imprisonment for telling plain truths about the
Prince Regent; and his prosecution by the Government made him many
distinguished friends. Some years later he went to Italy to join Shelley and
Byron in the establishment of a new magazine; and it was on returning from
Leghorn, where he had gone to meet Hunt, that Shelley was drowned. The new
magazine was soon abandoned, Hunt returned to England, engaged in various
periodical and other literary enterprises from which he seldom earned enough
to meet his expenses, and struggled on cheerfully and courageously to the age
of seventy-five.
Hunt`s poetry is pretty, fanciful, and musical, but, with the exception
of one or two pieces, is now little read. Much of his prose work is merely
highly-toned journalism, the interest of which has passed with its occasion.
But among his familiar essays, from which the paper here printed is taken,
there are many little masterpieces, suffused with his cheerful optimistic
spirit, and expressed always gracefully and sometimes exquisitely. "No man,"
says James Russell Lowell, "has ever understood the delicacies and luxuries of
language better than he; and his thoughts often have all the rounded grace and
shifting luster of a dove`s neck. . . . He was as pure-minded a man as ever
lived, and a critic whose subtlety of discrimination and whose soundness of
judgment, supported as it was on a broad basis of truly liberal scholarship,
have hardly yet won fitting appreciation."
On The Realities Of Imagination
There is not a more unthinking way of talking than to say such and such
pains and pleasures are only imaginary, and therefore to be got rid of or
under-valued accordingly. There is nothing imaginary in the common
acceptation of the word. The logic of Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield is good
argument here: - "Whatever is, is." Whatever touches us, whatever moves us,
does touch and does move us. We recognise the reality of it, as we do that of
a hand in the dark. We might as well say that a sight which makes us laugh, or
a blow which brings tears into our eyes, is imaginary, as that anything else
is imaginary which makes us laugh or weep. We can only judge of things by
their effects. Our perception constantly deceives us, in things with which we
suppose ourselves perfectly conversant; but our reception of their effect is a
different matter. Whether we are materialists or immaterialists, whether
things be about us or within us, whether we think the sun is a substance, or
only the image of a divine thought, an idea, a thing imaginary, we are equally
agreed as to the notion of its warmth. But on the other hand, as this warmth
is felt differently by different temperaments, so what we call imaginary
things affect different minds. What we have to do is not to deny their effect,
because we do not feel in the same proportion, or whether we even feel it at
all; but to see whether our neighbours may not be moved. If they are, there
is, to all intents and purposes, a moving cause. But we do not see it? No; -
neither perhaps do they. They only feel it; they are only sentient, - a word
which implies the sight given to the imagination by the feelings. But what do
you mean, we may ask in return, by seeing? Some rays of light come in contact
with the eye; they bring a sensation to it; in a word, they touch it; and the
impression left by this touch we call sight. How far does this differ in
effect from the impression left by any other touch, however mysterious? An ox
knocked down by a butcher, and a man knocked down by a fit of apoplexy,
equally feel themselves compelled to drop. The tickling of a straw and of a
comedy equally move the muscles about the mouth. The look of a beloved eye
will so thrill the frame, that old philosophers have had recourse to a
doctrine of beams and radiant particles flying from one sight to another. In
fine, what is contact itself, and why does it affect us? There is no one cause
more mysterious than another, if we look into it.
Nor does the question concern us like moral causes. We may be content to
know the earth by its fruits; but how to increase and improve them is a more
attractive study. If, instead of saying that the causes which moved in us this
or that pain or pleasure were imaginary, people were to say that the causes
themselves were removable, they would be nearer the truth. When a stone trips
us up, we do not fall to disputing its existence: we put it out of the way. In
like manner, when we suffer from what is called an imaginary pain, our
business is not to canvass the reality of it. Whether there is any cause or
not in that or any other perception, or whether everything consist not in what
is called effect, it is sufficient for us that the effect is real. Our sole
business is to remove those second causes, which always accompany the original
idea. As in deliriums, for instance, it would be idle to go about persuading
the patient that he did not behold the figures he says he does. He might
reasonably ask us, if he could, how we know anything about the matter; or how
we can be sure that in the infinite wonders of the universe certain realities
may not become apparent to certain eyes, whether diseased or not. Our business
would be to put him into that state of health in which human beings are not
diverted from their offices and comforts by a liability to such imaginations.
The best reply to his question would be, that such a morbidity is clearly no
more a fit state for a human being than a disarranged or incomplete state of
works is for a watch; and that seeing the general tendency of nature to this
completeness or state of comfort, we naturally conclude that the imaginations
in question, whether substantial or not, are at least not of the same lasting
or prevailing description.
We do not profess metaphysics. We are indeed so little conversant with
the masters of that art, that we are never sure whether we are using even its
proper terms. All that we may know on the subject comes to us from some
reflection and some experience; and this all may be so little as to make a
metaphysician smile; which, if he be a true one, he will do good - naturedly.
The pretender will take occasion, from our very confession, to say that we
know nothing. Our faculty, such as it is, is rather instinctive than
reasoning; rather physical than metaphysical; rather sentient because it loves
much, than because it knows much; rather calculated by a certain retention of
boyhood, and by its wanderings in the green places of thought, to light upon a
piece of the old golden world, than to tire ourselves, and conclude it
unattainable, by too wide and scientific a search. We pretend to see farther
than none but the worldly and the malignant. And yet those who see farther may
not see so well. We do not blind our eyes with looking upon the sun in the
heavens. We believe it to be there, but we find its light upon earth also; and
we would lead humanity, if we could, out of misery and coldness into the shine
of it. Pain might still be there; must be so, as long as we are mortal;
"For oft we still must weep, since we are human:"
but it should be pain for the sake of others, which is noble; not unnecessary
pain inflicted by or upon them, which it is absurd not to remove. The very
pains of mankind struggle towards pleasures; and such pains as are proper for
them have this inevitable accompaniment of true humanity, - that they cannot
but realise a certain gentleness of enjoyment. Thus the true bearer of pain
would come round to us; and he would not grudge us a share of his burden,
though in taking from his trouble it might diminish his pride. Pride is but a
bad pleasure at the expense of others. The great object of humanity is to
enrich everybody. If it is a task destined not to succeed, it is a good one
from its very nature; and fulfils at least a glad destiny of its own. To look
upon it austerely is in reality the reverse of austerity. It is only such an
impatience of the want of pleasure as leads us to grudge it in others; and
this impatience itself, if the sufferer knew how to use it, is but another
impulse, in the general yearning, towards an equal wealth of enjoyment.
But we shall be getting into other discussions. - The ground - work of
all happiness is health. Take care of this ground; and the doleful
imaginations that come to warn us against its abuse will avoid it. Take care
of this ground, and let as many glad imaginations throng to it as possible.
Read the magical works of the poets, and they will come. If you doubt their
existence, ask yourself whether you feel pleasure at the idea of them; whether
you are moved into delicious smiles, or tears as delicious. If you are, the
result is the same to you, whether they exist or not. It is not mere words to
say that he who goes through a rich man`s park, and sees things in it which
never bless the mental eyesight of the possessor, is richer than he. He is
richer. More results of pleasure come home to him. The ground is actually more
fertile to him: the place haunted with finer shapes. He has more servants to
come at his call, and administer to him with full hands. Knowledge, sympathy,
imagination, are all divining - rods, with which he discovers treasure. Let a
painter go through the grounds, and he will see not only the general colours
of green and brown, but their combinations and contrasts, and the modes in
which they might again be combined and contrasted. He will also put figures in
the landscape if there are none there, flocks and herds, or a solitary
spectator, or Venus lying with her white body among the violets and primroses.
Let a musician go through, and he will hear "differences discreet" in the
notes of the birds and the lapsing of the water - fall. He will fancy a
serenade of wind instruments in the open air at a lady`s window, with a voice
rising through it; or the horn of the hunter; or the musical cry of the
hounds,
"Matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each;"
or a solitary voice in a bower, singing for an expected lover; or the chapel
organ, waking up like the fountain of the winds. Let a poet go through the
grounds and he will heighten and increase all these sounds and images. He
will bring the colours from heaven, and put an unearthly meaning into the
voice. He will have stories of the sylvan inhabitants; will shift the
population through infinite varieties; will put a sentiment upon every sight
and sound; will be human, romantic, supernatural; will make all nature send
tribute into that spot.
We may say of the love of nature what Shakespeare says of another love,
that it
"Adds a precious seeing to the eye."
And we may say also, upon the like principle, that it adds a precious
hearing to the ear. This and imagination, which ever follows upon it, are the
two purifiers of our sense, which rescue us from the deafening babble of
common cares, and enable us to hear all the affectionate voices of earth
and heaven. The starry orbs, lapsing about in their smooth and sparkling
dance, sing to us. The brooks talk to us of solitude. The birds are the animal
spirits of nature, carolling in the air, like a careless lass.
"The gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes; and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils." - Paradise Lost, book iv.
The poets are called creators, because with their magical words they
bring forth to our eyesight the abundant images and beauties of creation. They
put them there, if the reader pleases; and so are literally creators. But
whether put there or discovered, whether created or invented (for invention
means nothing but finding out), there they are. If they touch us, they exist
to as much purpose as anything else which touches us. If a passage in King
Lear brings the tears into our eyes, it is real as the touch of a sorrowful
hand. If the flow of a song of Anacreon`s intoxicates us, it is as true to a
pulse within us as the wine he drank. We hear not their sounds with ears, nor
see their sights with eyes; but we hear and see both so truly, that we are
moved with pleasure; and the advantage, nay even the test, of seeing and
hearing, at any time, is not in the seeing and hearing, but in the ideas we
realise, and the pleasure we derive. Intellectual objects, therefore, inasmuch
as they come home to us, are as true a part of the stock of nature as visible
ones; and they are infinitely more abundant. Between the tree of a country
clown and the tree of a Milton on Spenser, what a difference in point of
productiveness! Between the plodding of a sexton through a churchyard and the
walk of a Gray, what a difference! What a difference between the Bermudas of a
ship - builder and the Bermoothes of Shakespeare! the isle
"Full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not;"
the isle of elves and fairies, that chased the tide to and fro on the
sea - shore; of coral - bones and the knell of sea - nymphs; of spirits
dancing on the sands, and singing amidst the hushes of the wind; of Caliban,
whose brute nature enchantment had made poetical; of Ariel, who lay in cowslip
bells, and rode upon the bat; of Miranda who wept when she saw Ferdinand work
so hard, and begged him, to let her help; telling him,
"I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not, I`ll die your maid. To be your fellow
You may deny me; but I`ll be your servant,
Whether you will or no."
Such are the discoveries which the poets make for us; worlds to which
that of Columbus was but a handful of brute matter. America began to be
richer for us the other day, when Humboldt came back and told us of its
luxuriant and gigantic vegetation; of the myriads of shooting lights, which
revel at evening in the southern sky; and that grand constellation, at which
Dante seems to have made so remarkable a guess (Purgatorio, cant. i., v. 22).
The natural warmth of the Mexican and Peruvian genius, set free from
despotism, will soon do all the rest for it; awaken the sleeping riches of its
eyesight, and call forth the glad music of its affections.
Imagination enriches everything. A great library contains not only books,
but
"The assembled souls of all that men held wise."
- Davenant.
The moon is Homer`s and Shakespeare`s moon, as well as the one we look
at. The sun comes out of his chamber in the east, with a sparkling eye,
"rejoicing like a bridegroom." The commonest thing becomes like Aaron`s rod,
that budded. Pope called up the spirits of the Cabala to wait upon a lock of
hair, and justly gave it the honours of a constellation; for he has hung it,
sparkling for ever in the eyes of posterity. A common meadow is a sorry thing
to a ditcher or a coxcomb; but by the help of its dues from imagination and
the love of nature, the grass brightens for us, the air soothes us, we feel as
we did in the daisied hours of childhood. Its verdures, its sheep, its hedge -
row elms, - all these, and all else which sight, and sound, and associations
can give it, are made to furnish a treasure of pleasant thoughts. Even brick
and mortar are vivified, as of old, at the harp of Orpheus. A metropolis
becomes no longer a mere collection of houses or of trades. It puts on all the
grandeur of its history, and its literature; its towers, and rivers; its art,
and jewellery, and foreign wealth; its multitude of human beings all intent
upon excitement, wise or yet to learn; the huge and sullen dignity of its
canopy of smoke by day; the wide gleam upwards of its lighted lustre at
nighttime; and the noise of its many chariots, heard at the same hour, when
the wind sets gently towards some quiet suburb.
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