is due to the absence of certain qualities which are more earthly and more prosaic calm reasoning power, keen insight into men's minds, delicacy of thought. Humour is the quiet laughter of reason at absurdity or inconsequence. How could one expect such laughter from a man who does not believe in reason, but lives always in the land of the supernatural, which is so near to that of the absurd, and where even a smile is unknown?

Such, then, is Blake's prose: clear and forcible as a rule, concentrated into short aphorisms, or breaking out in incisive little phrases; now and then trying to be humorous, but devoid of humour, sprinkled with flashes of imagination, but lacking in wit; simple and natural when describing the most extraordinary things; and, when it does spread out to passages of any length, deficient in construction. It is a weapon suitable only for attacking, the weapon of a man who ignores argument, who brooks no contradiction, and who fights with the aid of paradoxes, always aggressive in character. It cannot be called classical or eloquent is too irregular, too unequal for that. But, like all the rest of his work, it contains many fragmentary passages which, by reason of his sincerity and intense feeling, are not unworthy of the great classical writers.

I have here and there quoted at some length from his letters and from the Descriptive Catalogue, and have given several examples of his aphorisms. It will be enough now if I add a few further extracts illustrative of his style and his manner of thought.1

Take first the series of arguments by which he seeks to demonstrate the reality of inspiration and the lawfulness of belief.

The Argument: Man has no notion of moral fitness but from Education. Naturally, he is only a natural organ, subject to sense.

I. Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception; he perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.

II. Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.

III. From a perception of only three senses or three elements, none could deduce a fourth or fifth.

IV. None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions.

1 The most interesting specimen, perhaps, would be the Canterbury Pilgrims ; but it is too long to be quoted in full, and it would be very difficult to make selections. I have already given a short analysis of it; and any reader desirous of studying it in its entirety will find it reprinted at length in the "Canterbury Poets" edition of Blake's Poems, as well as in The Real Blake and other more expensive editions.

V. Man's desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceived.

VI. The desires and perceptions of man untaught by anything but organs of sense must be limited to objects of sense.

Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is. 1

The two extracts that follow are taken from the Descriptive Catalogue. In the first, Blake sets forth his own view of history, a view which, in some respects at any rate, seems to anticipate modern opinion on the subject.

The antiquities of every nation under Heaven are no less sacred than those of the Jews. They are the same thing, as Jacob Bryant and all antiquarians have proved. How other antiquities came to be neglected and disbelieved, while those of the Jews are collected and arranged, is an inquiry worthy both of the Antiquarian and Divine. All had originally one language and one religion: this was the religion of Jesus, the Everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus. The reasoning historian, turner and twister of causes and consequences, such as Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire cannot with all his artifice turn and twist one fact or disarrange self-evident action and reality. Reasons and opinions concerning acts are not history. Acts themselves alone are history, and these are not the exclusive property of either Hume, Gibbon or Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch or Herodotus. Tell me the acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please. Away with your reasoning and your rubbish! All that is not action is not worth reading. Tell me the What: I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How. I can find that out myself as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by opinions that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable or impossible. His opinion who does not see spiritual agency is not worth any man's reading. He who rejects a fact because it is improbable must reject all history and retain doubts only. 1

In the second, he discusses the respective merits of drawing and painting, and gives us a page of art criticism in which he almost recalls Ruskin by the independence of his judgment and the clearness of his thought.

The distinction that is made in modern times between a painting and drawing proceeds from ignorance of art. The merit of a Picture is the same as the merit of a drawing. The dauber daubs his drawings; and he who draws his drawings draws his Pictures. There is no difference between Raphael's cartoons and his frescoes or Pictures, except that the Frescoes 1 There is no Natural Religion. 2 Descriptive Catalogue, No. V.

or Pictures are more finished. When Mr. B. formerly painted in oil rough his Pictures were shown to certain painters and connoisseurs, who she that they were very admirable drawings on canvas, but not Pictures; but they said the same of Raphael's Pictures. Mr. B. thought this the greatest of compliments, though it was meant otherwise. If losing and obliterating the outline constitutes a Picture, Mr. B. will never be so foolish as to do one. Such art of losing the outlines is the art of Venice and Flanders. It loses all character and leaves what some people call "expression "; but this is a false notion of expression. Expression cannot exist without character as its stamina, and neither character nor expression can exist without form and determinate outline. Frescoe Painting is susceptible of higher finishing than Drawing on Paper or any other method of Painting. But he must have a strange organisation of sight who does not prefer a Drawing on Paper to a Daubing in Oil by the same master, supposing both to be done with equal care.

The great and golden rule of art as well as of life is this;-that the more distinct, sharp and wiry the boundary line, the more perfect the work of art, and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imagination, plagiarism and bungling. Great inventors in all ages knew this. Protogenes and Apelles knew each other by this line. Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Albert Dürer are known by this and by this alone. The want of this determinate and bounding form evidences the idea of want in the Artist's mind, and the pretence of the plagiary in all its branches. How do we distinguish the oak from the beech, the horse from the ox but by the bounding outline? How do we distinguish one face or countenance from another but by the bounding line and its infinite inflexion and movements? What is it that builds a house and plants a garden but the definite and determinate? What is it that distinguishes honesty from knavery but the hard and wiry line of rectitude and certainty in the actions and intentions? Leave out this line, and you leave out life itself. All is chaos again, and the line of the Almighty must be drawn out upon it again before man or beast can exist. Talk no more then of Correggio or Rembrandt, or any of those plagiaries of Venice or Flanders. They were but the lame imitators of lines drawn by their predecessors, and their works prove themselves contemptible, disarranged imitations, and blundering, misapplied copies.

1 Descriptive Catalogue, No. XV.

XIX: CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY—(2) LYRICAL POEMS

T

HE lyrical poems include the Poetical Sketches, the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and a number of separate pieces. In all these, we see Blake almost unaffected by any mystical tendency, or at any rate very slightly influenced by it, so that his work is in no way spoiled or obscured. It is on these poems, perhaps, that his fame will always depend, since it is here alone that he remains genuinely and entirely human.

The Poetical Sketches, written in early youth, are a series of experiments, full, as was only to be expected, of imitations of other poets, abounding in promise, and containing also many faults.

A great part of the book is devoted to an essay in drama, King Edward III, of which, however, only the first act was completed. It is obviously an imitation of Shakespeare; and this return to the Elizabethan manner, at a time when the fashionable style had so long been quite different, and was only just beginning to alter, shows a new tendency in poetry, the tendency to restore the imagination to its old supremacy. But even in this first attempt Blake's weaknesses are evident. He could not make the sustained effort required for the carrying through of a five-act drama. And not only did he abandon his work at the end of the first act, but even in that first act he gives no indication of such dramatic situations as would form a wellconstructed plot or lead up to an effective conclusion. The single issue of an approaching battle does not provide a sufficiently strong interest, because here the writer has not been able to connect it with the great human interests that depend upon it. The fragment before us can scarcely be called an attempt at dramatising a page of history. We certainly see, as we do in Shakespeare's historical plays, preparations for battle, conversations between the officers, meetings of royal councils, and so forth. But all this is only the external form of drama. There are no clearly drawn characters. Blake had in his mind certain general types: the warrior, the bishop, the man of commerce, but he did not know how to invest them with an interesting personality. His inability to infuse a soul into his creations is evident already.

The play contains nothing that is in any way remarkable except

the scraps of lyrical and even epic poetry which are scattered through it, and which show the young author's taste for the majestic and the terrible. Such, for instance, is the description of the Spirit of England, throned on the deep, with the ocean playing around her feet and acknowledging her sovereignty. And even more characteristic is the patriotic song of the minstrel who calls the English to arms, and celebrates at the same time his country's past and future greatness.

Our sons shall rule the empire of the sea.

Their mighty wings shall stretch from east to west,
Their nest is in the sea, but they shall roam
Like eagles for the prey; nor shall the young

Crave or be heard; for plenty shall bring forth,

Cities shall sing, and vales in rich array

Shall laugh, whose fruitful laps bend down with fulness.
Our sons shall rise from thrones in joy,

Each one buckling on his armour; Morning

Shall be prevented by their swords gleaming. 1

1

Here we find already the grandiose images and far-off visions that Blake always loved; and several other passages of the same aspiring nature give a foretaste of what his poetry was to become. They are at any rate an ample compensation for the prosaic versification, the familiar imagery, the many reminiscences of other writers, the trite and well-worn epithets that here betray the youthful and inexperienced author.

The other imitations in this volume are much shorter, and are chiefly of interest as showing the tendency of their writer's mind, which is, like that displayed in his drama, always in the direction of the terrific. There is a fragment of a Samson, into which phrases from the Bible and from Milton are copied almost word for word. There are two imitations of Ossian-Contemplation and The Couch of Death-written, like Macpherson's poems, in rhythmical prose; a short piece entitled Gwin, King of Norway, also much in the manner of Ossian's battle scenes; a ballad (Fair Elenor) modelled upon the bloodthirsty and terrific style of the Border Tales; and finally, an Imitation of Spencer, which strikes a new note of light and fanciful imagination, forsaking the horrible, and leading us into a world of beauty and pure lyricism.

To this world the fifteen remaining poems in the volume belong. Here we find more than mere promise. The poetic faculty now seems 1 King Edward III.