In quite a short time, oral tradition, in keeping of the bards, whose business is to purvey wonders, makes the champions perform easily, deeds which "the men of the present time" can only gape at; and every bard takes over the stock of tradition, not from original sources, but from the mingled fantasy and memory of the bard who came just before him.

The folk-origin of ballads and the multiple authorship of epics are heresies worse than the futilities of the Baconians; at any rate, they are based on the same resolute omission, and build on it a wilder fantasy.

Or if their minds be more quiet for the present, and they free from foreign fears, outward accidents, yet their bodies are out of tune, they suspect some part or other to be amiss, now their head aches, heart, stomach, spleen, &c. is misaffected, they shall surely have this or that disease; still troubled in body, mind, or both, and through wind, corrupt fantasy, some accidental distemper, continually molested.

divers terrible monstrous fictions in a thousand shapes and apparitions occur, with violent passions, by which the brain and fantasy are troubled and eclipsed.

For, as he said in Lucian after such conference, Hecates somniare mihi videor, I can think of nothing but hobgoblins: and as Tully notes, "for the most part our speeches in the daytime cause our fantasy to work upon the like in our sleep," which Ennius writes of Homer: Et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat: as a dog dreams of a hare, so do men on such subjects they thought on last.

Thou thinkest thou hearest and seest devils, black men, &c., 'tis not so, 'tis thy corrupt fantasy; settle thine imagination, thou art well.

If the heart will not lay aside those vicious motions, and the fantasy those fond imaginations, we have another form of government to enforce and refrain our outward members, that they be not led by our passions."

Our fantasy would intrude a thousand fears, suspicions, chimeras upon us, but we have reason to resist, yet we let it be overborne by our appetite; "imagination enforceth spirits, which, by an admirable league of nature, compel the nerves to obey, and they our several limbs:" we give too much way to our passions.

If he conceal his grievances, and will not be known of them, "they must observe by his looks, gestures, motions, fantasy, what it is that offends," and then to apply remedies unto him: many are instantly cured, when their minds are satisfied.

It is really an essay in philosophy dealing with the question of the immortality of the soul; and it has an especial interest for English readers owing to the fact that much in it that seems to be pure fantasy is based on researches undertaken by the British Society for Psychical Research.

It was the culmination of enchantment, the fulfilment of the wildest fantasy of wondrous color, strange form, and lavish adornment.

A pious and exemplary dame, especially well-versed in the catechism, who, in Goodman Brown's fantasy of the witches' revel in the forest, joins him on his way thither, and croaks over the loss of her broomstick, which was "all anointed with the juice of small-age and cinquefoil and wolf's bane" "Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," says another shape.

A third curious and abiding fantasy of certain persons is invariably to connect visualised pictures with words, the same picture to the same word.

He might have done something to build up again the fabric of that marvellous romance, that continuous dream, that stupendous and gorgeous fantasy in which Emily Brontë, for at least eleven years, lived and moved and had her being.

Plays of American life and fantasy.

Plays of American life and fantasy.

Both fantasy and fancy.

Now, I am not dallying with a facetious fantasy when I express the opinion, that the life and song of the English lark in America, superadded to the other institutions and influences indicated, would go a great way in fusing this hitherto insoluble element, and blending it harmoniously with the best vitalities of the nation.

Of what use is this vagabondizing of fantasy?

The bridal pair's visit to the graves of by-gone loves is a gem of fantasy.

And even as the wide land undulates in hills and dales, so the calm, broad, silvery river winds along in great bends and sweeps, until it and the lover's fantasy, cradled upon it like the swan, pass away into the distance and lose themselves in the immeasurable.

For since, among the dreamy fancies which are here confided to you in permanent letters, the recollection of this most beautiful world is the most significant, and has a certain sort of resemblance to what they call thought, I choose in preference to anything else a dithyrambic fantasy on the most lovely of situations.

DITHYRAMBIC FANTASY ON THE LOVELIEST OF SITUATIONS

That was my dithyrambic fantasy on the loveliest situation in the loveliest of worlds.

It is with these words that the author leaves his graceful fantasy; and such, we have perhaps the right to assume, was the spirit in which the whole was composed.