and may still be, for aught I know,- threw a stone upon the pile which marks the spot on which Thoreau built his hut, in which he lived for something over two years. The throwing of the stone was an act of reverence; in an instant it was not recognizable: it was just one more stone, not increasing perceptibly the size of the pile; but the fact that I had added a stone gave me pleasure, and this paper on William Blake may properly be regarded as another tiny stone erected to his honor. It can chiefly affect one person only, namely, the writer. I can neither add to nor detract from Blake's fame. Nor have I any theory to propound in regard to the so-called prophetic or mystical books; I have read most of them with such care as I could, but they have made no lasting impression on my mind. I come to the surface gasping for breath, confused, bewildered, and convinced that any literary merit they may have is not worth the effort required in attempting to comprehend the thoughts, if thoughts they are, so involved, so contradictory, so curiously strung together, and dealing with the personification of emotions rather than with ideas. That these emotions masquerade under uncouth names, hard to pronounce and troublesome to remember, only adds to my difficulty, and having said this much, let me say that I, for one, would not have them different: their very obscurity only adds to their interest. As works of art, to which tags of some sort must be given, they are just what is indicated. The mythology that Blake created was, so to speak, the overflow, the waste product, of his mind, and may be regarded as relatively unimportant. We should look at the pages of "Urizen," "Thel," "Milton,” America," "Europe," and the rest, as the greatest works of art produced in England and among the greatest in the world, and let us not seek to know too much. When we look at Rodin's statue, The Thinker, we do not ask, "What was he thinking of ?" we bend the knee. In like manner, let us bow in reverence before these great works of Blake's imagination. I am not sympathetic with explanations which only increase our bewilderment. To be told that every gesture, every pose, has a meaning, detracts from my enjoyment. I have tried to be sympathetic with the views held by some of his admirers, but without success. If the right leg of Palamabron or Urizen is advanced, benign spirits are in the ascendant: if Rahab raises her left arm, evil spirits have sway, you tell me. Here we part company. It may be so; I do not know, I do not care; with Browning, I would say, Did Shakespeare so, then the less Shakespeare he. I am treading on delicate ground. Here, you see, the personal equation comes in. I am not a student or a mystic, but a twentieth-century man of affairs, a manufacturer of electrical machinery, having problems of my own to solve which leave me little time to deal with the anfractuosities this was a favorite word of my friend Dr. Johnson-of the minds of the critics. For them the earth trembles and the sky is overcast. I am not of their world; their atmosphere I cannot breathe. I see lightning but no light, smoke but no fire; I grasp nothing. Even Swinburne, possessed of a most far-fetched if not actually unsound judgment, admits that he cannot always understand; and to the destination at which Swinburne fails to arrive, I am reluctant to set out. But it is time for me to begin. Dr. Johnson published his great dictionary in 1755. Two years later, near Golden Square in London, William Blake was born. There is no relation between the two events other than that they both took place in pretty nearly the dead centre of the eighteenth century. Some would say that the words "dead centre" are particularly applicable to the period under discussion. Pope was dead. He died in 1744, and few would have had the temerity to inform Dr. Johnson that poetry was dead, too. In conversation with Boswell, he said, "Sir, a thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another poet like Pope." My friend Amy Lowell would doubtless exclaim, "Let us hope so!" But to Dr. Johnson, Pope and poetry were synonymous terms. In these days of many small reputations and no single dominating figure, it is difficult for us to understand the immense vogue and following of a poet who could write such a couplet as Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason But Pope, if he had little sweetness, certainly compacted wisdom in a most extraordinary manner. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; after page of page quo Lines from Pope- or perhaps it would be more exact to say, couplets - intrude themselves on us unconsciously. Bartlett has tations from Pope, and from Blake not a single one; and Pope's poetry, which so delighted Dr. Johnson that he said, “If Pope is not a poet, it is useless to look for one," is largely typical of the verse that distinguished the eighteenth century. I do not forget Gray, but it was reserved for a later period fully to appreciate the author of the "Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard." If you think that I detain you unnecessarily with these details, it is because the background against which Blake appeared, and the nature of his surroundings, are most important for any appreciation of him. Blake's father was a small but respectable tradesman—a Dissenter, probably a Swedenborgian. His son received little or no education and was early apprenticed to an engraver, one Basire, from whom he learned his trade. We hear of him making drawings of the statues and monuments in Westminster Abbey, and we know that he was influenced all his life by these studies and that he preferred to draw from the artistic abominations in the Abbey rather than from life; this explains much. A perfectly proportioned male or female figure had little charm for Blake, if one can judge from those he drew. He could not see what we see, but, on the 1 The word "Wrote" is indicative of the first edition, which is now worth five thousand dollars. When "wrote" became "written," as it did in the later editions, the value sinks to a few shillings. |