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Johnson, Wordsworth and Shelley: Imaginative Letters, Landscape Descriptions and Critical Statements

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                I. Introduction

In The Educated Imagination Northrop Frye outlines the evolution of "three levels of the mind": 1) individual awareness, 2) social participation, and 3) the imagination. According to Frye, each level of consciousness is also one of expression, and so this model represents the complex relationship between three levels of thought and language (6). By switching the first two levels around, this pattern can be seen to parallel the progress of the Romantic revolution in terms of how the content and form of literature generally changed during this period. Thus the succession of prevailing ideas and discursive styles during this time can be understood to have occurred in three stages: the social, the individual, and the imaginative.

This essay will examine some representative prose of Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, and Percy Bysshe Shelley in order to exemplify Frye's three levels of the mind and the corresponding stages in the history of Romanticism.  Each of these writers, in the thought and language of a few letters, travelogues and critical statements, can be seen to argue one of the three basic perspectives of a literary dialectic following a particular order. Firstly, Johnson wrote to champion the rationalistic thesis which stems back to Plato and the origins of collectivism; his writings generally exhibit the thought characteristic of Frye's "level of social participation" and "the language of teachers and preachers and politicians and advertisers and lawyers and journalists and scientists"(6). Secondly, Wordsworth resurrected the emotive antithesis that stems from Longinus and the evolution of individualism in literature, and he wrote with what Frye would call a heightened sense of "consciousness and awareness" and a "language of self-expression"(6); however, he could not deny the value of reason and so the revolution was incomplete. And finally, Shelley provided an imaginative synthesis which neutralized the thesis and the antithesis; that is, he denied the divisions between reason and emotion and imagination, insisting that they are all inextricably part of the same creative process. Our three writers could and did write in ways that reflect all three of Frye's ‘levels of the mind, and to the extent that they did so artfully is the degree to which they reconciled the irreconcilable using what we might call the capital-I Imagination.

Shelley parted from Johnson and Wordsworth by insisting that no single level of mind can comprehend reality, and therefore thought and language ought to be simultaneously rational, emotional and imaginative. Shelley's Imagination, having been educated as it was by the successes and failures of Johnson and Wordsworth, provided the means by which he could usurp those two earlier authorities with the creative and abstract concept of synthesis as opposed to analysis. But Shelley’s paradoxical notion of reconciling the irreconcilable dualities like that of reason and emotion or that of society and the individual is no less problematical than was Johnson's rationalism or Wordsworth's ambiguously sensual yet intellectual point of view. With historical hindsight, we can see how Shelley's victory was only momentary, as was that of Johnson's thesis and Wordsworth's antithesis, and how the dialectic of the mind continues to revolve and change, thanks in part to the added impetus provided by these three writers.

By the end of the Romantic period the unstable synthesis lead to another thesis, another antithesis, and so on. Every system or theory has limitations in its capacity for explanation. These limits allow for, perhaps even encourage, those who are dissatisfied with the status quo to seek to bring about reversals in authority. In this way the paradigm shifts continue, not necessarily to bring us to a better or higher level of the mind, since literature "doesn't evolve or improve or progress"(Frye 7), but to keep thought and language from the crystallization and conventionality which occurs when authority, in literature as well as in every other field of discourse, is not challenged and reconstituted on a regular basis.

To determine the actual contribution to this crucial pattern of change in literature by Johnson, Wordsworth, and Shelley, this paper will begin with some letters to friends which reflect each author's personal point of view and his corresponding level of thought and style of language. The discussion will then move on to some descriptions of landscapes (also in letters) and central critical statements in order to illustrate how each author participated in the dialectic revolution regarding standards of content and form in literature. Finally, there will be an overall analysis of this selection of prose where it will be argued that the three authors were not only compelled by an evolutionary or historical force to adopt the positions which they did, but more importantly, that in doing so they figuratively overcame their literary predecessor, thus perpetuating the cycle and rescuing the thought and language of literature from the tyranny of a stagnant tradition.

II. Letters

Early Romanticism was a natural reaction against the prevailing authority of Neo-classicism, the eighteenth-century version of the objective thesis that promotes social participation and cultural tradition. The mind on this level is conceived of as being very orderly, rational, and disdainful of the distortions of reality produced by emotion and the imagination--at this point those two terms are virtually synonymous. For Samuel Johnson, a prime representative of the Neo-classic view, irrational thoughts and feeling were fanciful at best. In a letter of 8 July 1784 to the beloved Mrs. Thrale, with whom he had many tender correspondences, he warns her that "only some phantoms of the imagination seduce you to Italy" (31). The implication here is that both imagination and emotion are misleadingly seductive. Twenty years earlier Johnson had written a similar letter to James Boswell in which he advised his friend, who complained of having trouble thinking, to concentrate harder on his studies so that "the gusts of imagination will break away"  and  "fancies, illusive and destructive, [will] be banished henceforward from your thoughts forever"(9). Again, the idea that reason dominates the mind is suggested by the language as "imagination" is used in a derogatory way, and "gusts" and "fancies" express Johnson's consideration of Boswell's passions and appetites as negative influences in both the mind and writing of his biographer.

Many attitudes of Johnson's, such as his disapprobation of sensuality and sentimentality, are clearly exposed in his letters. He even recognized this himself. After acknowledging that his correspondences are likely to be published, he pens that in his letters "a man's soul lies naked....you see systems in their elements; you discover actions in their motives"(25). Indeed, Johnson is "naked" in these letters, most notably in the way he denounced what he thought were illusory influences upon his friends by, in effect, calling them emotional and imaginary. In his authority as a man of letters, both literally and figuratively, he helped make the stage in history to which he belongs one that emphasized thoughts over feelings, society over the individual and the use of practical language over that which he considered fanciful. It was as if, to use the image of a rider of reason on a horse of emotion or imagination, the former had to have full control over the latter or else the mind would stray from its true course.

Like Johnson, Wordsworth also wrote letters of advice to friends which bare his ‘soul,’ but in these we see a very different level of mind at work. Although reason and practical sense are not discarded, emotion and self-expression become the dominant basis for thought and language. The tenets of Neo-classicism give way to those of early Romanticism in a letter written by Wordsworth during the early 1790's to William Mathews. The latter had made "complaints about the diminution of [his] knowledge" (55)--rather as Boswell had done to Johnson except that Wordsworth was far from prescribing severe studies: he good humouredly recommends a leisurely reading of “Pope's description of the cave of spleens"(55)! Here we find a friendly celebration of how a poetic "cave" can help rejuvenate the mind. Wordsworth explicitly stated in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads that all good poetry was primarily a product of emotion, "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" which, when experienced by one with "more than usual organic sensibility" who can think "long and deeply," brought about the realization of universal truth (598). Such statements were central to the rise of English Romanticism and were used to defend the value of the individual and their self-expression.

As Romantic feelings and sensibilities became increasingly popular and conventional, it became clear that Wordsworth had managed to liberate thought and language to a significant degree. The rider now had much less control over the horse since emotion and imagination are now highly valued--although no longer synonymous, these terms were still somewhat interchangeable. Some of the old order remained, however, since reason still played an important role in the creative process. The curious qualification that one must think "long and deeply"(598), for instance, is very reminiscent of Johnson's advice to Boswell and indicates how much Wordsworth was still influenced by Neo-classic authority. At this point the image of an intelligent rider dominating an emotive horse continues to be an appropriate model of the mind because the tradition of rationalism had not yet lost its influence upon the thought and language of the day.

Turning our attention now to Shelley, he also wrote a letter to a friend in need of advice, but, in his response to Thomas Jefferson Hogg's complaint about suffering mental deterioration, he actually contradicted both afore-mentioned recommendations for such a malady--the intellectual exercise of study Johnson prescribes to Boswell, and the emotional invigoration of poetry Wordsworth offers to Mathews: Shelley the metaphysician says that to achieve a high degree of mental "comfort" one must "cease to think, cease to feel"(62). To become void of all intellectual and emotional activity is certainly strange medicine, a state of mind beyond anything suggested by the earlier notions of Johnsonian "fancy" or Wordsworthian "sensibility." Now the roles of rider and horse were reversed, as the Imagination, the transcendence over the particular subsumes both emotion and imagination as part of its creative force.

In The Defense of Poetry, Shelley undercuts Neo-classicism by stating that reason, "the principle of analysis," can only understand relationships between things known, while the Imagination, "the principal of synthesis," allows one to penetrate the mystery of life and to discern universal principles (310). Unlike Johnson and Wordsworth, who fully or partially believed in reason, Shelley believed only in the Imagination which, paradoxically, involves both reason and emotion but is neither the one nor the other. Of course Shelley did not bring a complete solution to the mystery which all art deals with; instead, he contributed to change in the historical dialectic regarding thought and language. The literary rider has been dismounted, and must now begin again.

III. Landscape Descriptions

Johnson, Wordsworth and Shelley all wrote about their travel experiences in letters and essays, and a comparison between examples representing each writer's characteristic level of thought and style of language reveals the historical relationship between these three literary authorities. Their reactions to natural scenes reflect their views on whether the content and form of literature should be absolutely, partially or not at all determined by reason. Johnson, for example, in yet another letter to Mrs. Thrale (3 July 1771), again reveals his "soul" and implies that the rider is superior to the horse in what is ostensibly about a tour of the Scottish Highland.  Humorously, the description of the landscape may be read as a sarcastic attack against both the individual and the imaginative points of view towards a landscape, or even, in hindsight, as a parody of the travelogues which were later to be written by Wordsworth and Shelley. The whole excursion was one of misery and disgust for Johnson. He complained about the land, the people, the lodgings, the food, the beds and even the bugs (18). No doubt such a journey in the Highlands must have been filled with inconveniences, but here there is an antipathy towards the natural world.

In Johnson’s letters society is continually stressed over the individual in the language of an analytical and hypercritical observer who brilliantly defends his prejudices. For example, when he tells us how there was very little to eat in the Highland inn were he stayed, a Scot might remember that in his Dictionary Johnson defined ‘oats’ as "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"(Pyles 208). He constantly refuses to let emotion and imagination run free so that he may enjoy what little beauty there was available to him. Even when he does find what he considers a reasonably nice spot, something prevents him from being pleased or impressed by it:

               I sat down to take notes on a green bank,

               with a small stream running at my feet,

               in the midst of savage solitude, with

               mountains before me, and on either hand,

               covered with heath. I looked round me,

               and wondered that I was not more

               affected, but the mind is not at all

               times equally ready to be put in

               motion... (15)

He excuses himself for being unable to respond to the landscape in the way expected of enraptured travellers. Whether he really "wondered" about his unsentimental and un-imaginative reaction to nature in a regretful manner is doubtful; on the contrary, the serious and sober language implies that he was wittily complimenting himself for not letting his mind be "affected" by the "savage solitude," which was for him a "motion" as undesirable as that of a runaway horse! In fact, the passage seems to ridicule anyone who imagines he or she could find true aesthetic pleasure in that Scottish glen.

From Johnson's view on life, the purpose of experiencing any landscape was not to have feeling and imaginings but social and intellectual exploration. This collectivistic orientation is suggested when he tells Mrs. Thrale that if she had been there with him, the landscape would have been more meaningful because

               we should have produced some reflections

               among us, either poetical or

               philosophical, for though Solitude be the

               nurse of woe, conversation is often the

               parent of remarks and discoveries.(15)

This letter is part of an epistolary defence of rationalism in the guise of travelogue which was written, it will be remembered, with an eye towards its publication; furthermore, it implies that Neo-classic beliefs were in need of defence, as indeed they did in the face of rising Romanticism. Johnson's rebelled against notions of solitude and poetic introspection, and of course these notions soon to become central to Wordsworth's individualism.

Instead of a typical travel account, which records what one did on a trip, Johnson wrote about what he could have done but pointedly did not do. This is a rhetorical ploy designed to denigrate the stereotypical conventions expressed by the sentimental and irrational observer of a landscape:

               You are perhaps imagining that I am

               withdrawn from the gay and the busy world

               into regions of peace and pastoral

               felicity, and am enjoying the reliques of

               the golden age; that I am surveying

               nature's magnificence from a mountain, or

               remarking her minuter beauties on the

               flowery bank of a winding rivulet; that I

               am invigorating myself in the sunshine,

               or delighting my imagination with being

               hidden from the invasion of human evils

               and human passions in the darkness of a

               thicket; that I am busy in gathering

               shells and pebbles on the shore, or

               contemplative on a rock, from which I

               look upon the water, and consider how

               many waves are rolling between me and

               Streatham.(19)

In this lengthy period, Johnson exaggerates the poetic vocabulary of landscape descriptions by using an overwhelming list of naturalistic details and superfluous references to emotion and imagination, and it is all tightly balanced and held together with extreme syntactical precision, as if to make the rigidly Neo-classical form defy the disorderly Romantic content. He also emphasizes how the emotional and imaginative appeal to nature is absurd because it has one gathering "shells and pebbles," contemplating a "rock," and enumerating "waves". By thus indicating that highly imaginative language is to be avoided in literature, Johnsons mocks what is to come.

Johnson was fully aware of the dialectical nature of history of criticism, that there have always been reversals in the manner in which authorities in thought and language regarded the relative importance of reason as compared to emotion and imagination. So it is likely that he anticipated how literature would continue to change with the arrival of every prominent new author. But he could not help being like a rider without a horse, in full control of himself but unable to utilize the power of emotion and imagination.

Wordsworth turned to the second level of mind and considered emotion as the basis for a rejuvenation in thought and language because it offered a means of understanding and discussing the world through individual rather than social awareness and expression. Countering the extreme claims of Neo-classical rationalism, Wordsworth made the most of a subjective or egotistical point of view in his landscape descriptions. Having just recently settled at a new home in Grasmere, Wordsworth wrote a letter to Coleridge to tell his friend about a brief tour he had made of the area. The prose style of this account is in many places very poetic, and there is an emphasis on an emotional rather than an intellectual response to nature. We read the mind of the poet himself rather than the surface of the landscape itself. There is feeling and action, as in "'twas a beautiful morning with driving snow-showers that disappeared by fits, and unveiled the east which was all one delicious pale orange colour,” or else,"in a moment a sweet little valley opened up before us, with an area of grassy ground, and a stream dashing over various lamina of black rocks close under a bank covered with firs"(679). Even though, in this case, it is the English Lake District rather than the Scottish Highlands being described, nevertheless we can see that Wordsworth had a much more developed "organic sensibility" than did Johnson, at least when it came to enjoying nature. He was not simply open to experiencing nature; he made the landscape come alive by projecting himself into it. Wordsworth, referring to the second of the three waterfalls encountered on the tour, said that he and his companions were “no unworthy spectators of this delightful scene” (Wordsworth 1970:I, 681) because they possessed the necessary emotional and imaginative capabilities to see the beauty of the scene. Wordsworth would no doubt have included Johnson among those deemed "unworthy" of appreciating nature.

When he writes about waterfalls as a sensitive spectator, Wordsworth does not dwell upon rational ideas and philosophical concepts; rather, he describes what he saw and felt in very emotional and imaginative manner:

               That huge rock of ivy on the right! the

               bank winding round on the left with all

               its living foliage, and the breeze

               stealing up the valley and bedewing the

               cavern with the faintest imaginable

               spray. And then the murmur of the water,

               the quiet, the seclusions, and a long

               summer day to dream in!"(682)

Nature is not regarded as an inert object of rational inquiry but as an active subject of poetic contemplation, something which the poet can engage with in his pursuit of universal truth. It is something which is "living" and "winding" and "stealing" through the landscape, and the language used to describe it is not regulated by the dictates of reason and common sense but is allowed to flow freely in an expression of the creative self. The rider no longer has full control over the horse, and both the domination of reason over emotion and imagination and that of society over the individual, two impediments to progressive change in thought and language, decreased as the rule of Neo-classicism gave way to that of Romanticism.

Wordsworth's theory could not, however, provide a fully consistent alternative to Johnson's definition of how the mind ought to operate and of what constituted good literature; his system of "feelings" and "organic sensibility" was inherently ambiguous because it was also one of thinking "long and deeply" about things. For Wordsworth, experiencing a landscape in particular or the universe in general certainly produced an emotional and imaginative euphoria, but this state of mind could not be artfully expressed without the deliberate use of reason. In fact, despite the efforts of the early Romantic writers to the contrary, the tradition of rationalism retained or perhaps even gained influence during this time as scientific and industrial developments came at a quickening pace. Through retrospection we can see that there was no way to completely liberate thought and language from Neo-classic conventionality until the idea of the Imagination arrived.

Shelley was foremost among the later Romantic poets who saw in the mind the ability to make connections and associations which, although not seemingly as "real" as ideas and feelings were considered to be, in some ways nevertheless represented universal truth. He realized that some things could only be explained through a paradoxical union of what had been considered the separate faculties of reason, emotion and imagination. Abandoning the fragmented models of the mind like those of Johnson and Wordsworth, which rather dogmatically force the consideration of one level of thought and language as inherently superior to another, Shelley argued that all three levels are involved during the creative process. For example, Shelley's landscape descriptions are not like the analytical reflections characteristic of Johnson, which isolate the speaker from his surroundings, nor are they similar to the recollections of Wordsworth, which ambiguously combine subjective impressions and objective observation; rather, they exemplify a fusion between self and other which defies any rational explanation and is singularly the product of the Imagination. This synthesis of reason and emotion, of society and the individual, appears in a letter to Thomas Love Peacock written during a tour of Italy. In it Shelley describes seeing some Roman ruins from the top of an ancient staircase:

               This you ascend, & arrive on the summit

               of these piles. Here grow on every side

               thick entangled wildernesses of myrtle

               & the myrtelus & bay & the flowering

               laurustinus whose white blossoms are

               just developed, the wild fig & a

               thousand nameless plants sown by the

               wandering winds.(85)

Shelley's "wildernesses" of plants, some named with botanical specificity, are the result of a combination of Johnsonian rationalism and Wordsworthian emotionalism. The passage focuses upon a particular place, as is expected in a travel letter, as well as upon the mind of the poet, and it contains both objective, prosaic details as well as subjective, poetic impressions. Also, the language used to describe the scene contrasts the rambling rhythm of a factual list with the intense alliteration of "white" and "wild" and the suggestiveness of "wandering winds." These juxtapositions of two levels of thought and language identify Shelley's views regarding mind and literature as dependent upon the power of the Imagination.

With Johnson, nature was properly the focus of a practical discourse upon social concerns, and with Wordsworth, landscapes are described in the sentimental language of individual reflection, but with Shelley, he does both: he depicts the relics of a dead civilization, overgrown by thriving vegetation, by means of creative synthesis so that the scene is simultaneously intellectual and emotional in significance. Monumental human achievements in time become lifeless and inert while nature inevitably lives on, a comment on tradition as well as originality. The expression of feelings of wonder and rapture is primarily concerned with the individual speaker, yet concerns of all humanity are being directly addressed.

Shelley's synthesis of the thought and language of the first two levels of the mind in the letter seems to affirm an implicit faith in the Imagination, the third level which represents a power superior to reason, emotion or imagination alone because it involves intelligence, feelings, and creativity at the same time. Like a horse liberated from the domination (though not the influence) of the rider, the Imagination is now free to range over unexplored--at least different if not better--pastures of thought and language. Unfettered by rational considerations of what is real and general, as opposed to what is illusory and particular to the individual, Shelley mixed reasonable and practical prose with emotional and imaginative poetry. When necessary he could either make good use of reason, just as Johnson had required of Boswell, or else he could subordinate reason to emotion, as Wordsworth implied that Mathews ought to do. Empowered by this flexibility of mind, the ability to adapt the strengths of the theories on mind and literature of his predecessors, Shelley helped to establish the Imagination as the sole agent responsible for the creative force behind the ideas and rhythms of good writing. He reconciled the opposing positions of previous authorities, and, although only for a moment in the full scope of history, he neutralized the force of Neo-classic tradition so as to bring the Romantic revolution full circle.

 IV. Critical Statements

The dialectical motion of the argument continues even today, however, and the horse of Imagination faithfully carries us along a course of constant renewal in thought and language. All models of the mind and theories on literature are eventually proven to be fallible, including Johnson's dogmatic monarchy of reason, Wordsworth's confusing hierarchy of emotions and imagination over reason, and even Shelley's anarchy, where the three levels of the mind mystically combine. As a result of their fallibility, these notions have been succeeded by the conceptualizations of countless other authorities, such as those set forth by Frye, and there can be no end to this process. However, in contrast to this capacity for change, there is the tendency for the argument to repeat itself as it revolves around the same three basic positions. Thus the influence of all great writers lives on through tradition, even though some of their views have become obsolete.

As in the letters, the critical statements of each author have both strengths, expressions of truth which remain valid and part of the dialectical cycle, and weaknesses which, curiously, are actually positive in that they contribute to change. Johnson and Wordsworth present the truth regarding the value of reason and society or emotion and the individual, but they also leave us with more questions than they answered. We are prompted by these questions to further investigate the nature of thought and language for ourselves.

Turning to the critical statements of our authors, an example of the historically overthrown yet timelessly authoritative utterances which Johnson typically made can be found in one issue "The Rambler" (No.4 31 March 1750) where he wondered how the "wild strain of imagination" could ever be received in "polite and learned ages" since "a knowledge of nature....can never be attained by solitary diligence, but must arise from general converse, and accurate observation of the living world"(68). To some degree he is correct here, as he was in his letters, for the vagaries of individualism certainly can obscure universal truth; however, remembering his rationalistic bias in his advice to Boswell and his biased references to Scotland, it is doubtful that Johnson or even the ancient authorities he defends were themselves absolutely free from the "unjust prejudices, perverse opinions, and incongruous images"(69) which, in truth, are apparent in the thought and language of everyone. In contrast, Shelley realized how truth is relative to one's point of view, and that Johnson was expressing personality rather than truth when he denied that emotion and imagination is necessary for, and inherent in, all good literature; indeed, why else should the rider oppress the horse, without which very little progress would be made, unless he is presumptuously convinced of his own superiority and independence?

Johnson avoided facts which contradict the Neo-classic rule that good writing must be thoroughly rational, as when he has to acknowledge that the excellence of Shakespeare's works lies, in part, in their unequalled emotional power. To obscure this problem, Johnson refers to the thought and language of the relatively (compared to Johnson) unlearned and unsophisticated bard in terms of "general passions"(263) or "practical axioms and domestick wisdom"(264). By prevaricating and making an exception for Shakespeare, and it could not be otherwise, Johnson's position is weakened; Shelley's is strengthened, however, because he acknowledged that emotion is as important as reason in the production of truthful literature. With the arrival of the Lyrical Ballads, the argument over what is the ideal state of mind and literature becomes less blatantly inconsistent and more profoundly ambiguous as Wordsworth reacts against the "simple authority" of conservative critics like Johnson who, favouring the rational and collective over the emotional and individual levels of mind.

The tradition of Neo-classicism required that the poet alter his feelings for the purpose of writing. Wordsworth considered this a detestable request because if the poet "sets [his feelings] aside in one instance, he may be induced to repeat this act till his mind loses all confidence in itself, and becomes utterly debilitated"(612). Unlike Johnson, who sublimated particular feelings in order to make general passions the focus of his discourse, Wordsworth wrote about the importance of expressing feelings.

Wordsworth's criticism did indeed help to initiate the revolution against Neo-classic thought and language, but it could not provide any definite alternative because it lacked both the intellectual clarity characteristic of Johnson and the Imaginative unity typical of Shelley. While Wordsworth proclaimed that emotion and imagination are the means of a cure for an ailing friend and are the basis for fully experiencing and expressing the beauty of a landscape, he states that such feelings and self-expression must be qualified by rational and practical considerations: "essential passions of the heart" (597) are to be "modified and directed by our thoughts" so that "we discover what is really important” (598) in terms of society and culture. Thus the old order remains, and once again the rider controls the horse, although with the reins much slacker than Johnson would ever have allowed.

In terms of language, Wordsworth was understandably opposed to an excessive "elevation in style"(603) of the sort Johnson had parodied in his travel letter. A writer must know the folk who live a "Low and rustic life....because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived"(Wordsworth 1984:597). This view is admirably democratic but perilously close to denying the importance of individuality and reverting to Johnson's position that the general and universal in thought and language is strictly social and practical in origin. Besides, one is unlikely to find a farmer who speaks the way Wordsworth wrote. At this point in the historical dialectic there arose an urgent need for a synthesis between the strengths of the Neo-classic and early Romantic arguments, and for a more consistent and all-inclusive view of mind and literature.

A new concept of the Imagination arrived as an inevitable reaction against the oppositions and difficulties set forth by Johnson and Wordsworth. Shelley's revolutionary idea was that there is no distinction between reason and emotion and so there was no longer any argument over which of the two was superior since both were necessary for a sound mind and good literature. His objectively detailed and yet subjectively evocative depiction of Roman ruins is an example of this power of synthesis which enables the writer to deal with both everything that is real, according to reason and emotion, and with everything that could be or which exists only in the world of imagination. The letter employs an effective combination of perspectives in a mental and literary attempt to understand the nature of the mystery of, as Frye puts it, the "educated" Imagination. Shelley would have seconded Frye's argument that "whether your point of view is Western [Johnsonian] or Eastern [Wordsworthian], intellect and emotion never get together in your mind as you're simply looking at the world. They alternate, and keep you divided between them"(3). Creative synthesis is neither "an intellectual or an emotional conception, because it's both at once"(3). This amazing reconciliation means that there is "no longer the subject and the object, the watcher and the things being watched"(4), and there is no longer any cause for conflict between the concerns for society of Neo-classicism and those for the individual of early Romanticism. The religious and metaphysical implications of this third level of thought and language are highly problematical, however, for the basic premise is that we have the god-like ability to unite what we consider opposites, such as ourselves and the universe or even ourselves and God.

Shelley's paradoxical point of view regarding the nature of mind and literature was apparent in his advice to his friend Hogg to keep himself from thinking and feeling because here there is no distinction made between reason and emotion or imagination. Likewise, that there is no difference between social and practical values and those of self-awareness and self-expression seems to be the implication of his touring letters which are not exclusively written in either collectivistic prose nor in individualistic poetry but in an epistolary synthesis of both. Since Johnson had somewhat restricted his thoughts and language to the first level of mind, in his prose and in his mind he ended up gathering the "shells and pebbles" of facts and enumerated the "waves" of generalities, sometimes things as unreal as the fancies he so often ridiculed. Wordsworth's poetic style held some traces of what Shelley called the "principle of synthesis"(310), but it was Shelley who said: "Reason is to the imagination [and emotions] as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance" (310)--and, one might add, as the horse is to the rider. This was the radical reversal in authority that had long been awaited.

Shelley was acutely aware of how tradition can crystallize ideas and their forms of expression. He declares that "if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations [between ideas and words]...language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human discourse" (312). The Imagination, which allows the poet to synthesize new ideas and words and restructure thought and language, is of paramount importance because without it all awareness and expression, by becoming simply rational or emotional. Literature, when it predominately about society or the individual but not both, it ceases to be alive and meaningful. As an alternative it is clearly preferable to run the risk of Imagining that which does not or cannot exist in reality, even at the risk of conjuring up phantoms or being called an unworthy spectator on life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

     Frye, Northrop. 1979. The Educated Imagination         

          Toronto: Hunter Rose (for CBC).

     Johnson, Samuel. 1971. Samuel Johnson: Rasselas, Poems and selected

          Plays. Ed. Bertrand Bronson. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

     Pyles, Thomas and Algeo, John. 1982. The History and Development of the

          English Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Johanovich.

     Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 1964. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

          Ed. Frederick L. Jones. Vol.II. London: Clarendon.

     --  --. 1986. "A Defense of Poetry." Criticism:

          The Major Statements. Ed. Charles Kaplan.

          New York: St. Martins. 310-335.

     --  --. 1977. Shelley's Poetry and Prose.

          Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers.

          New York: Norton.

     Wordsworth, William. 1984. William Wordsworth.

          Ed. by Stephen Gill. Oxford: Oxford University.

     --  --. 1970. The Letters of Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth.

          Volume I: The Early Years. Ed. Ernest De Selincourt.

          Oxford: Clarendon.

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