Like colours undistinguish'd in the night,
Till the dusk images, moved to the light,
Teach the discerning Faculty to choose
Which it had best adopt and which refuse."
"Some New Pieces" in Oldham's Works, pp. 126-27., 1684.
Dryden, alluding to his work:
"When it was only a confused mass of thoughts tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and there either to be chosen or rejected by the judgment."—Dedication to the Rival Ladies.
Lord Byron's appropriation of the same idea:
——"As yet 'tis but a chaos
Of darkly brooding thoughts: my fancy is