Would you think it possible now that the ground-work of this fine imagery should be laid in a passage of Ben Jonson? Yet so we read, or seem to read, in his Vision of Delight.
Break, Phant’sy, from thy cave of cloud,
And spread thy purple wings:
Create of airy forms a stream,
And tho’ it be a waking dream,
Yet let it like an odour rise
To all the senses here,
And fall like sleep upon their eyes
Or musick in their ear.
It is a delicate matter to analyze such passages as these; which, how exquisite soever in the poetry, when estimated by the fine phrenzy of a Genius, hardly look like sense when given in plain prose. But if you give me leave to take them in pieces, I will do it, at least, with reverence. We find then, that Fancy is here employed in one of her nicest operations, the production of a day-dream; which both poets represent as an airy form, or forms streaming in the air, gently falling on the eye-lids of her entranced votary. So far their imagery agrees. But now comes the mark of imitation I would point out to you. Milton carries the idea still further, and improves finely upon it, in the conception as well as expression. Jonson evokes fancy out of her cave of cloud, those cells of the mind, as it were, in which during her intervals of rest, and when unemploy’d, fancy lies hid; and bids her, like a Magician, create this stream of forms. All this is just and truly poetical. But Milton goes further. He employs the dewy-feather’d sleep as his Minister in this machinery. And the mysterious day-dream is seen waving at his wings in airy stream. Jonson would have Fancy immediately produce this Dream. Milton more poetically, because in more distinct and particular imagery, represents Fancy as doing her work by means of sleep; that soft composure of the mind abstracted from outward objects, in which it yields to these phantastic impressions.
You see then a wonderful improvement in this addition to the original thought. And the notion of dreams waving at the wings of sleep is, by the way, further justified by what Virgil feigns of their sticking or rather fluttering on the leaves of his magic tree in the infernal regions. But it is curious to observe how this improvement itself arose from hints suggested by his original. From Jonson’s dream, falling, like sleep upon their eyes, Milton took his feather’d sleep, which he impersonates so properly; And from Phant’sy’s spreading her purple wings, a circumstance, not so immediately connected with Jonson’s design of creating of airy forms a stream, he catched the idea of Sleep spreading her wings; and to good purpose, since the airy stream of forms was to wave at them.
However, Jonson’s image is, in itself, incomparable. It is taken from a winged insect breaking out of its Aurelia state, its cave of cloud, as it is finely called: Not unlike that of Mr. Pope,
So spins the Silk-worm small its slender store,
And labours till it clouds itself all o’er.
IV. Dunc. v. 253.
And nothing can be juster than this allusion. For the ancients always pictured Fancy and Human-love with Insect’s wings.
XIV. Thus then, whether the poet prevaricates, enlarges, or adds, still we frequently find some latent circumstance, attending his management, that convicts him of Imitation. Nay, he is not safe even when he denies himself these liberties; I mean when he only glances at his original. “For, in this case, the borrowed sentiment usually wants something of that perspicuity which always attends the first delivery of it.” This Rule may be considered as the Reverse of the last. A writer, sometimes, takes a pleasure to refine on a plain thought: Sometimes (and that is usually when the original sentiment is well known and fully developed) he does not so much as attempt to open and explain it.
A poet of the last age has the following lines, on the subject of Religion:
Religion now is a young Mistress here,
For which each man will fight, and dye at least;
Let it alone awhile, and ’t will become
A kind of married wife; people will be
Content to live with it in quietness.