¹ cf. Hazlitt: ‘It cannot be concealed, however, that the progress of knowledge and refinement has a tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination and to clip the wings of poetry. The province of the imagination is principally visionary, the unknown and undefined: the understanding restores things to their natural boundaries and strips them of their fanciful pretensions. Hence the history of religion and poetical enthusiasm is much the same; and both have received a sensible shock from the progress of experimental philosophy.’