"Imagination is that faculty whereby the mind not only reflects on its own operations, but which assembles the various ideas conveyed to the understanding by the canal of sensation, and treasured up in the repository of the memory, compounding or disjoining them at pleasure; and which, by its plastic power of inventing new associations of ideas, and of combining them with infinite variety, is enabled to present a creation of its own, and to exhibit scenes and objects which never existed in nature."
An Essay on Original Genius
2 entries in ESTC (1767).<br>
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Text from William Duff, <u>An Essay on Original Genius; and its Various Modes of Exertion in Philosophy and the Fine Arts, Particularly in Poetry</u> (London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly, 1767). &lt;<a href="http://estc.bl.uk/T58836a">Link to ESTC</a>&gt;