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Certainly he imagines himself to have done something or other in behalf of moral philosophy. For in a well-known couplet he informs us 'That not in Fancy's maze he lingered long, But stooped to Truth, and moralized his song. Upon these lines a lady once made to me this very acute and significant remark.
Pleasant at noon beside the vocal brook To lay me down, and watch the the floating clouds, And shape to Fancy's wild similitudes Their ever-varying forms; and oh, how sweet, To drive my flock at evening to the fold, And hasten to our little hut, and hear The voice of kindness bid me welcome home!"
So, on the idle dreams of youth, Breaks the loud trumpet-call of truth, Bids each fair vision pass away, Like landscape on the lake that lay, As fair, as flitting, and as frail, As that which fled the Autumn gale. For ever dead to fancy's eye Be each gay form that glided by, While dreams of love and lady's charms Give place to honour and to arms!
But it was a second and deeper thought that furnished him the chief compensation. In one of the "Twice-Told Tales," "Fancy's Show-Box," he deals with the question, how far the mere thought of sin, the incipient desire to commit it, may injure the soul.
There, while that sulky iterated boom Shook the thick air, our songs of home we sang; And memory wrought for each on fancy's loom, Unmoved, unshaken by War's clash and clang, Some dreamy picture woven of light and gloom, Of home and peace." Who shall forget that night who took a part in it?
Without that face pale as the primrose with hyacinthine locks, for ever shunning and for ever haunting me, mocking my waking thoughts as in a dream; without that smile which my heart could never turn to scorn; without those eyes dark with their own lustre, still bent on mine, and drawing the soul into their liquid mazes like a sea of love; without that name trembling in fancy's ear; without that form gliding before me like Oread or Dryad in fabled groves, what should I do? how pass away the listless, leaden-footed hours?
Sometimes he thinks that Heaven this pageant sent, And ordered all the pageants as they went; Sometimes that only 'twas wild Fancy's play, The loose and scattered relics of the day. We must now request our readers to adjourn to the breakfast parlour of Mr.
Dick, fearing to lose ground in Fancy's good opinion, retained his coat like the rest of the thinner men; and Mr. Shiner did the same from superior knowledge. And now a further phase of revelry had disclosed itself.
The witch laid down her knife and potato, and then poured into Fancy's ear a long and detailed list of directions, glancing up from the corner of her eye into Fancy's face with an expression of sinister humour. Fancy's face brightened, clouded, rose and sank, as the narrative proceeded.
He contended that the purpose of the stage is to instruct; he argued for poetic justice; he discussed the unities; he spoke of propriety of manners and language; and he warned of the danger of fancy's overriding judgment "the Fancy may be gain'd, and the Guards corrupted, and Reason suborn'd against itself."
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