Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/70

46 by the child to his fairy tales.—When we emphasize a similarity seen in mere external or accidental relations or follow suggestions not of an essential nature in the object, we call it fancy. Ruskin, in his Modern Painters, vol. i, part iii, Of the Imaginative Faculty, would distinguish three classes of the imagination:—

(a) The associative imagination. This is the power of imagination by which we call into association other images that tend to produce the same or allied emotion. When this association has no common ground of emotion it is fancy. The test for the associative imagination, which has the power to combine ideas to form a conception, is that if one part is taken away the rest of the combination goes to pieces. It requires intense simplicity, harmony, and absolute truth. Andersen's Fairy Tales are a perfect drill for the associative imagination. Literature parallels life and what is presented calls up individual experience. Any child will feel a thrill of kinship with the experiences given in The Tin Soldier—a little boy's birthday, the opening of the box, the counting of the soldiers, and the setting of them upon the table. And because here Andersen has transformed this usual experience with a vivacity and charm, the tale ranks high as a tale of imagination. Little Ida's Flowers and Thumbelina are tales of pure fancy. Grimm's The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean and The Spindle, the Shuttle, and the Needle rank in the same class, as also do the Norse The Doll i' the Grass and the English Tom Thumb.