surroundings and tendencies rather than examinations of facts-will not be out of place, as an introduction to our study of the man himself. Blake lived from 1757 to 1827, and the best of his poetical works were produced between 1782 and 1803. Standing, therefore, on the threshold of the nineteenth century, he belongs to the period of the French Revolution, and of the revival of Liberal ideas in England. From a literary point of view, he comes just at the close of the pseudoclassical period of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the rising romanticism. If it were possible to define in so many words his attitude towards, or his part in, this movement, it could only be done by calling him the prophet of liberty and imagination, as opposed to reason and its authority. All through his work he declaims against logic and reason, and defends the cause of imagination and vision with their inevitable consequences, absolute liberty and uncontrolled fancy, in politics as well as in art. To describe the birth of these ideas in his age, and follow them through the generations that have felt their influence, would be to write the history of imagination in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and recount its incessant conflicts with reason and reality. We can only attempt to sketch the chief phases of the struggle in broad outline.

Ever since the seventeenth century, reason seems to have been the ruling power in Europe. The great enthusiasms of the sixteenth century had long ago died down: men could see no new worlds to conquer, either on the map of the globe or in the sphere of human knowledge. "Everything has been said, and we come too late." The eighteenth century was, consequently, an age, not of creation but of organisation. Now, what does an organising age need? No dreams, no fancy, no imagination, but an exact sense of the real, a logical spirit, a strong and correct judgment—all attributes of reason. It is reason, therefore, which we find dominating the political as well as the literary and the social life of the age. In politics, we see how in France the ministers of Louis XIV were settling the administration of the old monarchy, and strengthening its institutions, as if it were to last for ever. In England, the nation was definitely ridding itself of absolute monarchy, and, by a series of violent though carefully calculated changes, establishing for good and all the constitution which is still in force. This final settlement of their institutions brought about, in both countries, the absolute rule of law, and the habit of complete submission, whether willing or unwilling, to the established order.

And we find the same organisation and the same discipline in things spiritual. The religion of the State, that which was most in accordance with reason, implanted itself in France, where the Government repressed all deviations from it, Protestantism and mystical Quietism as well as the atheistical tendencies that were beginning to spread. In England, the same victorious warfare was being waged, though less violently, against all religion that did not conform to the rule of the established Church, which adopted the same masterful and contemptuous attitude towards the ruined remnant of Catholicism, towards the many Puritans, who could only find the realisation of their dreams in America, and towards the freethinkers, who as yet did not dare to make themselves known.

Philosophy, also, was entirely under the influence of reason. Descartes had made it the sole basis of his system, just as Bacon had founded his science upon reasoned experience and observation of reality, and as Locke was to build up all his knowledge of the world upon the reasoned evidence of the senses. It was actually through reason that Pascal succeeded in proving the impotence of reason itself and the rightful supremacy of faith.

And what are we to say of literature properly so called? What had now become of the creative fancy, the fruitful disorder of the Renaissance? Where were the freedom and the playful spontaneity of the sixteenth century poets? Where the complex and exuberant worlds of Rabelais and Shakespeare? All these had vanished for ever, giving place to men bent upon organisation and order, who had cleared the virgin forests, cut away the growing brushwood, and given us instead the beautiful straight avenues of Versailles and the well-trimmed groves of Hampton Court. Classicism meant calm and ordered prose, with its disciplined phrases and chosen words. It meant reasoned, logical poetry, the flow of imagination checked, and even the strongest passion moving with the regular rise and fall of an equinoctial tide, submitting itself to almost mathematical laws, and perhaps only the more powerful in proportion as it was more reasoned. Reason was the great mistress, and all literary works "borrowed from her alone their lustre and their value." And the same phenomenon occurred in England. Pope's classicism is in no way inferior to that of Boileau.

The eighteenth century, in this respect, only continues and goes further than the 17th. It becomes the age of reason triumphant, 1 Boileau : Art Poétique, Canto I, l. 37.

enjoying the fruits of its victory. Rational principles are established, never to be disturbed again: nothing remains but to accord them a blind submission. But, as always happens when the highest point has been reached, the tendency to decline has already made itself felt; and faults begin to appear in what had been regarded as perfection itself. It cannot be otherwise. To say that a system of laws is perfect and will remain so for ever, is to condemn the world which is governed by it to stagnation and death. And so men feel that the established institutions and systems of government, and even the established principles of thought, are all insufficient. A state of general uneasiness and discontent pervades all minds. The machine that seemed so perfect is no longer so. It must be changed, must perhaps even be destroyed and remade. We will destroy and remake it : but, in destroying and remaking alike, we will adopt the same principle, that of logic and reason.

It is in France that this tendency is most marked, both in politics and in the movement of ideas. Upon reason and its universal force, the philosophers founded the sanctity of man and the equality of all. In the name of reason Voltaire attacked superstitions and abuses, and Montesquieu proved all laws to be based on logic. In the name of reason also, Rousseau was to establish his theory of Natural Religion, to give mankind an educational system, and to create a new society in all its details. All the directing spirits of the Revolution were logicians. The principles of liberty, equality and fraternity were based upon faultless arguments: the revolutionary assemblies undermined and built up society according to theorems that were logically irrefutable. The world was reconstructed by them upon a mathematical base; and the great revolutionary festival of the goddess Reason was, as it were, a symbolic crowning of the whole eighteenth century.

England had no part in this destruction or in these triumphs. Her organisation was too strong for the disturbance to be so much felt. English home politics in the eighteenth century were only a series of personal and party quarrels, between Whigs and Tories, now one and now the other being the winner in their Liliputian disputes. In these, criticism by pinpricks, schoolboy logic, was all that was required: malice and satire won the day in argument. The great events that were occurring outside the country, the founding of the English Colonial Empire, were for all but a few misunderstood visionaries like Clive and Warren Hastings-only a

matter of figures in the debit and credit accounts of great commercial companies which had to be supported. So here again we have the reign of Reason: but here it was the reign of some Byzantine emperor occupied with petty quarrels; sometimes only the reign of an idle and inactive king.

Let us see now how literature and poetry fared under such mental conditions, in England and in France.

It is remarkable that all the great French writers of the eighteenth century were writers of prose. What were such poets as Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, Ducis or Delille, compared with Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot and Buffon? What was even Voltaire's own poetry compared with his prose, as perfect in quality as it was voluminous in quantity? And in England it was the same. Certainly, the English poets were more numerous and more celebrated. The names of Thomson, Gray, Collins and, later, those of Crabbe and Cowper, have achieved world-wide fame; and, as for Pope, his supremacy in poetry can almost be compared with that of Voltaire in prose. But, if we were obliged to sacrifice either all the poetry or all the prose of this century, who could have a moment's hesitation in deciding? The great prose writers crowd upon each other and dominate their age. We have essayists like Steele and the impeccable Addison; Swift, with his lashing sarcasm and the matchless power of his misanthropy. We have the founders of the modern novel : the precise and lifelike Defoe; Richardson, the depicter of passion, the simple and domestic Goldsmith; Smollett, so full of movement; Sterne, eccentric and affected, yet so attractive in his fine, desultory dialogue; and, above all, Fielding with his keen observation, his bold realism, his power of witty and fascinating narration, the real master of the English novel. We have Sheridan, almost the only English writer of comedy; Johnson, gruff, domineering and argumentative and many others, the founders of the classic tradition in English prose.

Further, the poets, even Pope himself, are above all remarkable for qualities that we admire in writers of prose. Their work rarely stirs in us what we now call poetic feeling. Their poetry, whether it be critical, philosophical, narrative or descriptive, is essentially didactic in character, and almost devoid of lyric beauty. We admire its ordered logic, the clearness and precision of its phrasing, its wit, its concise lines that have so often become proverbs, the absolute correctness and perfect poise which make it a model for style. All

these are qualities belonging to excellent prose. In these poets, poetic feeling seems to be nothing but exactly balanced thought adapting itself to the monotonous rhythm of the lines. Their use of metre is absolutely according to rule; and it is to them that the beginner must first go to study English prosody. We find fault with their exact cadences for being monotonous. They regarded them as perfect: and how can perfection admit of any variety? But this melody, or rather this ordered development of lines, only helped them to concentrate their thought, to "press it down with poetry's many feet," 1 to make their sentences more symmetrical, to give more force and concentration to their language. For us, rhythm in poetry means something quite different: its object is to induce in us a special psychological condition analogous to that which music produces; a state of readiness for being either lulled to rest by the dreams of a wandering imagination, or carried away by the blind force of the emotions which poetry seeks to arouse in us.

These men of the eighteenth century did not want to be lulled to rest or carried away: what they wanted was to examine everything dispassionately, to weigh everything in the calm and even balance of reason. All that life of the soul which is compounded of deep emotions, imaginative fancies, violent passions that guide and shatter the lives of men—they thought that all this ought to be kept hidden deep in each man's heart, and not made a subject for literary treatment. Should not literature be only a polite relaxation, a matter for drawingroom conversation or for discussion in an assembly of courteous and distinguished people? Passion may not be introduced until it has been calmed and made fit for society: imagination must adopt the form sanctioned by fashion. As for the soul as it really is, with its disordered movements, its bleeding wounds, its hungry longings, its wild dreams, its delirious joys, it must never be allowed to show itself to a polite and lettered world. Remember the advice that the most polished man of the age, Lord Chesterfield, gave to his son: Never laugh only have a courteous smile on your lips. Laughter, like tears, like everything that comes straight from the bottom of the heart, is vulgar. Man must clothe his soul's nakedness in court dress; must check the beating of his heart; so that no one can see his soul behind the discreetly veiled glance of his eyes, nor guess his passion except from the slight trembling of his spotless lace ruffle.

Of course, if any writer did desire to bring some element of reality Montaigne Essays, Book I, chap. 25.