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Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.

Fancy

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Shakespeare.—Merchant of Venice, Act III. Scene 2. (A Song.)

In maiden meditation, fancy free.
Shakespeare.—Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II. Scene 2. (Oberon to Puck.)

Pacing through the forest, chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.
Shakespeare.—As You Like It, Act IV. Scene 3. (Oliver to Celia.)

Chew on fair fancy’s food: nor deem unmeet
I will not with a bitter chase the sweet.
Ariosto.—Orlando Furioso, Canto III. Stanza 62. (Rose’s Translation.)

Chew the cud of politics.
Swift.—Tale of a Tub, Sec. 2.

An old hat, and the humour of forty fancies pricked in’t for a feather.
Shakespeare.—Taming of the Shrew, Act III. Scene 2. (Biondello’s Description of Petruchio’s lackey.)

A confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished and then either chosen or rejected by the judgment.
Dryden.—Dedication to the “Rival Ladies.”

When the fancy labouring for a birth,
With unfelt throes brings its rude issue forth,
How often, when imperfect shapeless thought
Is by the judgment into fashion wrought,
Like colours undistinguished in the night,
Till the dark images moved to the light,
Teach the discerning faculty to choose,
Which it had best adopt and which refuse.
Oldham.—Letter to a Friend.

As yet ’tis but a chaos
Of darkly brooding thoughts: my fancy is
In her first work, more nearly to the light,
Holding the sleeping images of things
For the selection of the pausing judgment.
Byron.—Marino Faliero, (The Doge solus,) Act I. Scene 2.