In both cases the readers read with the imagination, or their own
natures would not have kindled with so sudden a flash. The torch is
passed on to those only whose hands are outstretched to receive it. To
read with the imagination, one must take time to let the figures
reform in his own mind; he must see them with great distinctness and
realise them with great definiteness. Benjamin Franklin tells us, in
that Autobiography which was one of our earliest and remains one of
our most genuine pieces of writing, that when he discovered his need
of a larger vocabulary he took some of the tales which he found in an
odd volume of the "Spectator" and turned them into verse; "and after a
time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back
again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into
confusion, and after some weeks endeavoured to reduce them into the
best order before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the
paper." Such a patient recasting of material for the ends of verbal
exactness and accuracy suggests ways in which the imagination may deal
with characters and scenes in order to stimulate and foster its own
activity.
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