V General Character of his Works and his System VI Mysticism and its various Forms VII His Theories-The Work of Demolition-Negation VIII Constructive Work-Imagination and Symbolism IX His Universe-The Creation of the World: Spectre I: INTRODUCTION HE name of William Blake immediately suggests, to anyone interested in art or literature, the idea of an eccentric, T a man half out of his senses, who was subject to extraordinary fancies and apocalyptic visions, and who, in his attempts to give a description of his supernatural dreams which should be at once poetic and pictorial, reveals himself as a very notable artist and a very unequal poet; so that we find in his work beauties of the highest order, side by side with pages that are almost unreadable. In this study of Blake we shall consider him almost exclusively as poet and visionary, disregarding his artistic side except in so far as it throws light upon his character as a man. We shall examine him as a strange poetical and psychological phenomenon. We shall try to define his ideas of the world as we can gather them from his writings, and to give as comprehensible a description as possible of the universe that he saw in his visions. Finally, and chiefly, we shall endeavour to show the influence of the visionary upon the poet, searching his works for signs of the mystical and imaginative spirit that produced them, and being thus led to see, in this very characteristic case, the general effect of mysticism and of prophetic vision upon the poetic spirit properly so called. This will therefore be above all an attempt at literary criticism and psychological analysis. We shall not concern ourselves with the historical aspect of the case, interesting as this is, nor seek to show whether Blake was or was not the product of his age and his environment. We shall look upon him rather as a unique personality, thrown by chance, as he would have himself said, out of the world of eternity into that of space and time, to appear there for an instant and then return to his true dwelling-place. The time and place of his coming to earth are of small importance. What do matter are the immortal words he spoke; and these belong to no country and no age. It is impossible, however, to understand him properly without knowing his position with regard to the age he lived in, or seeing how far he followed and how far he departed from the general course of its thought. A few general remarks, therefore, brief indications of |