Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/261

Rh and abiding. The beings which he creates, if suddenly transferred to our conditions, would make themselves at home. His land is one wherein the types of all ages meet and are contemporary. He created beings, and took circumstances as he found them; that is, as his knowledge enabled him to conceive of them at the time. The garb and manners of his personages were also a secondary matter. Each successive generation makes the acquaintance of these creatures, and troubles itself little about their fashions and acquirements. Knowledge is progressive, communicable: the types of soul are constant, and are sufficient in themselves.

It does no harm, as I said at the outset of this course, for the most advanced audience to go back now and then to the primer of art,—to think upon the meaning of an elementary term. Nor is it an easy thing to formulate clear statements of qualities which we instantly recognize or miss in any human production, and for which we have a ready, a traditional, nomenclature. So, then, what is the artistic imagination, that of one who expresses his conceptions in form or language? I should call Definition of the artistic Imagination. it a faculty of conceiving things according to their actualities or possibilities,—that is, as they are or may be; of conceiving them clearly; of seeing with the eyes closed, and hearing with the ears sealed, and vividly feeling, things which exist only through the will of the artist's genius. Not only of