How did Samuel Taylor Coleridge distinguish between fancy and imagination in Biographia Literaria?

In his seminal work of literary criticism, Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge established a definitive distinction between imagination and fancy that moved beyond their traditional usage as synonyms.12

Coleridge characterized imagination as the primary faculty of creativity, possessing the power to shape, unify, and reconcile opposites—such as the universal and the particular or the objective and the subjective. He viewed imagination as an archetypal, unifying force that integrates intuitive understanding with organized, discriminating thought.13

In contrast, Coleridge defined fancy as a faculty that is dependent on and inferior to the imagination. He described fancy as merely "associative," functioning as a mode of memory that rearranges fixed images and details without the transformative, unifying power inherent in the imagination. While imagination creates, fancy essentially gathers and decorates.1