Keats and "Fancy"...

[BrokenLyre]

Can anyone tell me the difference between "fancy" and "imagination" in Keats's day?

I have read scholars who insist there is a difference between the two. Others seem to coalesce the two into one notion. It's confusing. "The fancy cannot cheat so well, as she is famed to do" wrote Keats in Nightingale. Anyway, does anyone really know the difference - and what source can I go to that would help explain the difference? I am asking because I will be doing a 3 hour Keats Lecture (for friends) on June 1 and I'd like to nail this down.

THANKS!!

[Cath]

Didn't Coleridge write about this in Biographia Literaria? I think he had very complex explanations for a distinction between the two, though:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16344

I'd also be interested in what others can say on the difference in Keats's day.

[Raphael]

Gosh, I am not sure from their viewpoint but as a "modern" person I would see it that fancy implies imagination that is perhaps a bit whimsical, fantastical ..something that one might get rather carried away with rather than imagination that can be of a more logical thing- which can lead to creation of art or scientific discovery. Fancy is never used really now except to describe one person's attraction to another.