Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

POETICAL FANCY. 179
a power of associating ideas according to relations of resemblance and analogy. This definition will probably be thought
too general; and to approach too near to that given of wit. In
order to discover the necessary limitations, we shall consider
~vhat the circumstances are, which please us in poetical allu
sions. As these allusions are suggested by fancy, and are the
most striking instances in which it displays itself, the received
rules of critics with respect to them may throw some light or
the mental power which gives them birth.
1. An allusion pleases, by illustrating a subject comparatively
obscure. Hence, I apprehend, it will be found that allusions
from the intellectual world to the material, are more pleasing,
than from the material world to the intellectual. Mason, in his
Ode to Memory, compares the influence of that faculty over
our ideas, to the authority of a general over his troops;
-— " thou, whose sway
The throng'd ideal hosts obey;
Who bidst their ranks now vanish, now appear'
Flame in the van, or darken in the rear."
Would the allusion have been equally pleasing, from a general
marshalling his soldiers, to memory and the succession of ideas?
The effect of a literal and spiritless translation of a work of
genius, has been compared to that of the figures which we see,
when we look at the wrong side of a beautiful piece of tapestry.
The allusion is ingenious and happy; but the pleasure which
we receive from it arises, not merely from the analogy which it
presents to us, but from the illustration which it affords of the
author's idea. No one, surely, in speaking of a piece of tapestry, would think of comparing the difference between its sides,
to that between an original composition and a literal translation.
Cicero, and after him Mr. Locke, in illustrating the difficulty
of attending to the subjects of our consciousness, have coLLpared the mind to the eye, which sees every object around it,
but is invisible to itself. To have compared the eye, in this
respect, to the mind, would have been absurd.
Mr. Pope's comparison of the progress of youthful curiosity,
in the pursuits of science; to that of a traveller among the Alps,