together, do not suffice to account entirely for Blake's visionary powers. Nor does an examination of his physical appearance give us much help. The general expression of his face, and, above all, his farsearching eyes, might suggest some physiological explanation. But it requires attention to discover, on the cast of his head made by a contemporary phrenologist, the protuberances which Gall associated with the qualities of ideality and belief in the miraculous.

We can trace more easily the close relation between the development of his mind and the gradual change in the nature of his visions. Those of his childhood had no strongly marked characteristics. He saw them like pictures stepping out of their frames. We are not told in what form God appeared to him when he was four years old: probably he received some vague impression such as that conveyed later on by the description, in one of his poems, of how God appear'd like his father, in white." Such a mental image seems natural enough if we think of the religious atmosphere of an ordinary English family at this period, and especially that of his own family. The vision of Ezekiel which he saw a few years later may have had its origin in the many Bible readings and discussions attended by the household. That of the angels only resembles a child's usual conception of these "winged messengers from heaven." It was not until after he had read and meditated upon Swedenborg that he began to see visions like Swedenborg's own. Spirits, prophets and angels appeared to him. He dined with them and disputed with them, and was borne, in their company, beyond our limits of time and space. And his Memorable Fancies closely resemble Swedenborg's own. One sentence of Swedenborg's might apply almost exactly to Blake's experience :

The man finds himself transported into an intermediate state between sleeping and waking, but he has no knowledge of being otherwise than awake. All his senses are as wakeful as they would be if the body were entirely awake. In this state, men have seen angels and spirits in all the reality of life, have heard them speak, and, still more wonderful, have touched them for, at such a moment, the body scarcely interferes at all.2

Constantly, in Swedenborg, we come upon passages such as, "I have spoken with many spirits"; "I know that these things are true because I have often seen them"; "It has been my destiny to live for years in company with spirits "; " I have conversed 1 1 Songs of Innocence: The Little Boy Found. 2 Heaven and Hell: § 440.

about this with the angels." "I can affirm this after long experience."2 "I have often been permitted to see the atmosphere of falsehood which exhales from hell." 3 "In order that I might understand the nature and character of heaven and of the celestial joys, I have often, and for long periods, been permitted by God to witness its delights. I know them, therefore, from my own actual experience.'

" 4

6

97

In a note to Swedenborg, Blake asserts that these things, common in times of antiquity, do still happen, though more rarely. And in the same simple and matter-of-fact way he makes statements like " As I was walking among the fires of hell . . . I collected some of their Proverbs"; 5 or ;" or "When I came home, I saw a mighty Devil"; " or " An Angel came to me and said: O, pitiable foolish young man ! consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself.' The angel takes him into hell, and they converse there. He questions the prophets and they answer him. And he even becomes intimate with one spirit. "This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend: we often read the Bible together." Thus Blake and Swedenborg alike are quite familiar with the world of demons and angels they rub shoulders with its inhabitants like amicable neighbours and good companions. Both of them walk as unconcernedly through this mysterious region as we would walk through our native town among our own friends. But it must not be forgotten that Blake only saw his visions after he had read of, and meditated upon, those of Swedenborg.

Later on, the influence of Swedenborg was supplemented by that of Boehme and the Cabalists, and, further, by the development of his own thought in the same direction. He went to the same source from which Swedenborg had drawn his inspiration-the Word: that is to say, the Bible. Then his visions became more peculiarly his own. He still from time to time saw the demons: but soon a new order of personages appeared to him, whom he vaguely calls "the Eternals."

Eternals, I hear your call gladly.

Dictate swift-winged words, and fear not
To unfold your dark visions of torment."

1 Heaven and Hell: § 526. 2 Heaven and Hell: § 527. * Heaven and Hell: § 538. • Heaven and Hell: § 413.

'Marriage of Heaven and Hell: p. 6.

6

Marriage of Heaven and Hell: p. 6. * Marriage of Heaven and Hell: p. 17. 8 Marriage of Heaven and Hell: p. 24. • Urisen: Preludium.

And even Christ, as Blake conceived him to be, revealed Himself. I see the Saviour over me,

Spreading his beams of love and dictating the words of this mild song.1

Then came beings of a still more specialised character, personified abstractions which were, to all appearance, created entirely by his own imagination. He saw Los, the spirit of prophecy, who carried him away in a whirlwind, and set him down in his cottage at Felpham. Here he was visited by one of the Daughters of Inspiration.

Walking in my Cottage Garden, sudden I beheld

The Virgin Ololon and address'd her as a Daughter of Beulah :
Virgin of Providence, fear not to enter into my Cottage.2

And the page on which these lines appear shows also a picture of his cottage, with himself walking in front of the door, and Ololon descending from the sky.

All this was not merely a poetical inspiration like the vision of the Muse calling to de Musset, that amorous night in May, or coming to Burns in his cottage and crowning him with the poet's laurel wreath. Neither Burns nor de Musset would have claimed for their Muse an objective existence. Blake affirmed that he had actually seen Ololon; and very probably he spoke the truth. His own creations did appear to him in visible form, so that he could draw them, as if from a living model. His work is full of such visions : his pictures swarm with them. And the personages represented can only be recognised after a careful reading of the Prophetic Books. Thus his supernatural visitors became more and more numerous; but they had their birth always in the invisible world of his thoughts, his reading, his mental conceptions. This parallel development can only be regarded as proving the subjective nature of these heavenly visitations. They were simply the ideas of a thinker, clothed with a symbolical and visible form, and perceived, as having an objective existence, by an abnormally sensitive brain.

There were even some cases in which this last feature was lacking, and the visions were nothing but vivid poetical creations. On one occasion, when he had been describing a certain vision in minute detail, someone asked him where he had seen it; and he touched his forehead and replied " Here!" Such an answer shows us how a great many of Blake's assertions as to what he had seen are to be 2 Milton: p. 36. 26.

Jerusalem: p. 4. 4.

interpreted. He often saw only in the same sense as other great poets. But while the others could always dismiss their visions, as it were, into nothingness, and recognise their unreality as soon as the moment of inspiration had gone, Blake remained always conscious of the real existence of his visions. To him, they were the only reality, while our real world was but a shadow and an illusion.

Two circumstances helped to induce in him his attitude towards his visions, and his belief in their objective reality. One was the suddenness with which his inspiration came to him: the other the increasing frequency of the visions themselves.

His moments of inspiration seem always to have come and gone in a sudden and unexpected manner. He never planned any of his work beforehand never thought a poem out as a whole, settling the scheme of it first, and filling it in, page by page, afterwards. He knew nothing of the labour of composition, as experienced by other writers. He wrote seemingly without preparation of any kind, and once a page was written, took no further trouble about it. Undoubtedly there had been a long course of unconscious mental preparation : thoughts and feelings were perpetually fermenting in his brain, without making any distinct attempt at expression. And, as soon as he became aware of them, as soon as they took definite shape, he left everything else and committed them to paper. But these moments were never of his own deliberate choosing; and hence his persuasion that he wrote under the orders of some supernatural power. This is how inspiration comes to all poets: but with the others, the long course of conscious labour that they have gone through prevents them from believing in any sudden and capricious intervention on the part of an external force.

The second circumstance arose from the strength of his visual imagination. Though, in many cases, his dreams remained mere mental fantasies, in others their vividness and his concentration of his whole soul upon them, enabled him to arrive, like other great mystics, at an actual perception of the abstract images created by his mind. This faculty, the germ of which he possessed in childhood, developed itself to such a degree that at last all his conceptions took the form of visual and objective images materialised in space before his eyes.

Finally, we must take into account one last feature in Blake's work -his use of symbolism. Later on we shall see how this was to create and also to injure his poetic style. But his symbolic conception of the

world, which assisted him in the production of his visions, helps us now to explain them. Behind each visible object Blake imagined a spirit, of which the visible object was only the symbol. Then, before his imaginative vision, and perhaps before his bodily eyes also, the symbol vanished, and only the hidden spiritual essence remained. Where we see a lark soaring into the sky, he saw an angel bearing a message heavenward. “ I assert for myself," he says, " that I do not behold the outward creation"; and continues :

What," it will be questioned, "when the sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire something like a guinea? Oh! no! no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying—' Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty!' I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it and not with it." 1

Such a passage leaves no room for doubt as to the real nature of these visions. Behind the disc of the sun, his imagination showed him the company of angels. He therefore disregarded the one as a mere illusion, and saw only the other. And then, whenever the concentration of his thought was strong enough, the mental vision became a bodily one.

We can thus explain his visions and their apparent reality, without necessarily admitting the material existence of the objects he saw. The fact that some of his creations were actually seen, some years ago, by a medium, 2 has nothing extraordinary in it. It is a simple phenomenon of thought transmission, there having been present in the room an assiduous reader of Blake's work, whose mind was full of his ideas.

I do not for a moment wish, in arguing thus, to deny the reality of every kind of vision, nor even that of all Blake's visions. It is true that the same might be said of all great visionaries, and that even miraculous ecstasies like that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus may have had their origin in some long, complicated, and quite unconscious mental process, culminating in a flash of illumination which, by reason of its suddenness and its lack of apparent cause, made all beholders marvel. The conflict of opinion is the same in every case. Only the visionary himself, and those whom he succeeds in convincing, believe in the reality of visions: all the rest either deny them entirely or else explain them as hallucinations of a diseased brain. There are good reasons on both sides; and it is no more absurd ' Last Judgment. 2 Ellis and Yeats: William Blake, Vol. I, chap. 8.