This distinction between
fancy and imagination is one of the most abstruse and important points
of metaphysics. I have written seven hundred pages of promise to
elucidate it, which promise I shall keep as faithfully as the bank
will its promise to pay.
MARIONETTA
I assure you, Mr Flosky, I care no more about metaphysics than I do
about the bank; and, if you will condescend to talk to a simple girl
in intelligible terms--
MR FLOSKY
Say not condescend! Know you not that you talk to the most humble of
men, to one who has buckled on the armour of sanctity, and clothed
himself with humility as with a garment?
MARIONETTA
My cousin Scythrop has of late had an air of mystery about him, which
gives me great uneasiness.
MR FLOSKY
That is strange: nothing is so becoming to a man as an air of mystery.
Mystery is the very key-stone of all that is beautiful in poetry, all
that is sacred in faith, and all that is recondite in transcendental
psychology. I am writing a ballad which is all mystery; it is 'such
stuff as dreams are made of,' and is, indeed, stuff made of a dream;
for, last night I fell asleep as usual over my book, and had a vision
of pure reason. I composed five hundred lines in my sleep; so that,
having had a dream of a ballad, I am now officiating as my own Peter
Quince, and making a ballad of my dream, and it shall be called
Bottom's Dream, because it has no bottom.
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