A true fairytale is, to my mind, very like the sonata. If two or three men sat down to write each what the sonata meant to him, what approximation to definite idea would be the result? A fairytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away. The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only and sweetness. To one the cloudy rendezvous is a wild dance, with terror at its heart; to another a majestic march of heavenly hosts, with Truth in their center pointing their course but as yet restraining her voice. Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking; such ought the sonata, the fairytale to be.

GEORGE MCDONALD, in Fantasists on Fantasy,

Edited by ROBERT H. BOYER and KENNETH J. ZAHORSKI