Chapter XIV: Epilogue

Life is a voyage of discovery or rediscovery. Those, like Blake, born in a Christian land make the same voyage. The Christian tradition is handed on to us in our tender infancy, and most people take what their immediate teachers tell them, and live on that dry stock for the rest of their days. But the sinner and the genius, like Blake, early throw their inheritance overboard, and driven by native energy go in adventurous quest of new lands. The first half of Blake's life was spent thus. He would rebel at all costs, he would above all protest against what he hated--the religion of repression.

For many years Christianity and repression were for him synonymous terms. His craving was for expression. Parents, teachers, priests, kings, governments, were enemies to spontaneous self-expression. Then they must go. His youthful exuberance admitted of no half-measures. Like Ezekiel and Christ, he poured out his invective against hireling shepherds: unlike them, he ceased for a time to believe in good shepherds. One and all they were out to repress men's instincts and passions, until, driven in, the pent-up passion poisoned their whole nature, or in the weaker sort was rendered passive. Blake proclaimed his doctrine with vehemence, but no one regarded him.

Pursuing this course for many years, he perceived some wonderful things. Art is expression; and he made an application of all the glories of art to human character. Teach men to express themselves, and then instead of their being as dull and similar as a flock of sheep governed by the herd instinct, they would grow into a beautiful variety. Man would create himself as an artist creates his works. The same law governed both. Repression when successful induced a nerveless, sapless type. Man became an overwhipped dog. Expression produced a strong, beautiful character above all petty and tiresome rules of conduct. The conduct of such is carelessly right.

It was by Blake's frank proclamation of the _ego_ that he anticipated so much of what the modern apostles of the superman have made us all familiar with. From Ibsen's _Doll's House_ to Nietzsche's _Thus spake Zarathustra_, confidence in the _ego_ has been proclaimed as the means to liberty, beauty, and sovereignty; and this has been accompanied by revivals on a large scale of those ancient mystery religions that turn on the culture of the divine _ego_.

This was a road of excess which Blake pursued as far as an individual might. In the nineteenth century the law of the _ego_, the struggle for life, the survival of the fittest, brute force, were regarded as all one, and transferred from the individual to the State, till in a few years the world was plunged into war.

Blake's voyage of rediscovery began during the Reign of Terror. The new teachers, like Swedenborg and Godwin, Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, failed to satisfy his own craving for expression. The Reign of Terror appalled him when it showed him his principle at work in the proletariat. Then it was that turning again to the Evangelists he made the wonderful discovery, which later apostles of the _ego_ have not made, that Jesus Christ was the perfect example and embodiment of his vision. He had pictured to himself a man, impelled by a creative passion, whose character in every part should be manifestly the outcome of fiery energy. And there was the Man in the Subject of the Gospels. But he saw that Jesus Christ could not be labelled or classed. There was egoistic self-expression in Him, and there was self-renunciation. Somehow He had altogether escaped the modern dilemma of self-expression or self-sacrifice. Both were magnificently present in Him and united, because His self-expression was resting on His self-surrender to God. Give up God, and man swings perpetually between duty to neighbour and duty to self. Believe in and surrender to God, and each falls into its proper place. This was not the only synthesis in the character of Jesus. He was a union of all possible contraries. Gentleness and fierceness; non-resistance and aggressive force; non-resentment and fiery invective; forgiveness and severe justice, haughty pride and lowliness; self-confidence and utter dependence upon God, all were in Jesus. Henceforth Blake could keep his vision of Jesus and his vision of art, for they were one.

The next stage in rediscovery was to find out what the great body of dogmatic truth had affirmed about Jesus down the Christian centuries. Here he made little progress. He probably felt, as we all do at times, that the simplicity of the gospel was lost in the maze of dogmatic subtleties. The negative aspect of dogma, that it rules out all that would infringe on that simplicity, never occurred to him. His mind was governed and distracted by Hindoo pantheism, and catholic anthropomorphism filtered and diluted through Swedenborg. Even after he had repudiated Swedenborg the distraction remained. His new understanding of Christ taught him that he must accept the ultimate antinomy of good and evil, and that therefore Christ's heaven and hell must remain; but the pantheism never abated its watery flood, and the emphatic catholic teaching of transcendence and immanence gained no sufficient hold to deliver his mind.

The truth is that Blake was not a great thinker, still less a system-builder. He ought to have found the best Christian system while young and kept to it. Then he could have lived his life of vision within coherent bounds. Clear, sharp dogma, like outline in art, would have given rest to his mind, substance to his visions, and saved him from the waste of pouring out a torrent of incoherent sayings containing scraps of gnosticism, theosophy, rosicrucianism, and almost every heresy under the sun.

The master-mind in his youth who could have given him a sound system was Dr Johnson, and he would not listen to him. How should the arch-rebel pay any attention to the arch-conservator? Dr Johnson said many foolish things about things of no great importance: he was wise in great matters. An ounce of folly, like a dead fly in the ointment, suffices to put off the fastidious rebel, who will seize hold of any excuse. Eventually Blake subscribed to the same creed as Dr Johnson. That surely is a marvellous unanimity for such diverse minds.

The master-mind in his age who could have given him a better system than his own, and to whom he was beginning to listen, was Dante. His catholicism may have been of a medieval pattern, but it was very little infected with the time-spirit; it is even now finer than Swedenborg's fabrication, and modern compared with the gnosticism that bulked so largely in Blake's mind.

Blake makes no disciples, and no school can claim him, but he speaks to all who have any mental equipment. His vision of Christ, if we can make it our own and fill out its defects, will put us beyond the modern worship of the superman, and take us out of that sectarianism which gains ascendancy for a little while because of its lightness and fragmentariness.

The confusion in Blake's mental life affects his art. He declared consistently in times of clear vision that outline, form, and foundation are the essence of spiritual things. This is beyond anything to be found in Sir Joshua's _Discourses_, and anticipates Benedetto Croce when he says that art is an ultimate, that "form is constant and is spiritual activity," while "matter is changeable," yet he accomplished many designs that Reynolds could have taught him to correct.

His later poems suffer still more. The energy in them is terrific, and they are filled with flashes of inspiration; but their atmosphere is murky, and never clears for more than fifty lines at a time. They are storehouses, but the one who would get anything out of them must bring his taper with him.

The early short poems, on the contrary, shine with their own light. _The Tiger_ and _The Emmet_ are written before his mind has time to plunge into the penumbra of his disorderly system.

Blake was still young in spirit when he died. One feels with him, as with Tolstoi, that he had far from come to the end of his tether. He was one of the few to whose years another threescore might have been added with advantage. Where would he have arrived? I think when we remember that for more than twenty years before his death he was on the voyage of rediscovery, we may hazard the guess that he would have reached the catholic form of Christianity, having thrown overboard his private symbolism on the way; and that then he would have produced great, long poems of crystalline clearness, which would have placed him by the side of the master-poets of the ages.

Yet it is idle work guessing at what might have been. We blame a man's times, or birth, or church, or what not for his failures, when we should look for some fundamental lack in his own equipment. That Blake was not quite one of our conquerors, then, we will not attribute to the eighteenth century or to Swedenborg's predominant influence in his early life, but simply to the fact that he lacked the strong, virile reason that could keep pace with the on-rush of his visions. He was all Los: Urizen, whom he repudiated with such scorn, alone could have balanced his nature and led him to the supreme achievement.

INDEX

_Abel the Shepherd_, 176

Abstract Philosophy, 109

_Adam and Eve observed by Satan_, 123

Aders, Mr and Mrs, 187

_Age of Reason_, 87, 93

Ahania, 111

Akashic Records, 132

Albion, 149-50

_America: A Prophecy_, 96-7, 98

American Independence, War of, 86, 87, 98

_Ancient of Days_, 101

_Angelic Wisdom_, 58

Angelico, Fra, 176

Arblay, M. d', 85

Asia, 109

Astrology, 172-3

Augustine, St, 152

Austen, Jane, 170

Barbauld, Mrs, 30

Bartolozzi, 17, 123, 154

Barton, Bernard, 174

_Bas Bleu_, 28

Basire, 17, 18

Bastille, the, 89, 90, 92

Bath, Lord, 29

Beaumont and Fletcher, 33

Beethoven, 170

Bible, the, 122, 133

Bildad, 184

Blair's _Grave_, 154-9

Blake, Catherine, 30, 31, 37, 38, 40, 66, 148

Blake, James (Sen.), 12, 39

Blake, James (Jun.), 39

Blake, Robert, 14, 39, 40, 45

Blake, William, born, 11;
baptized, 12;
vision at Peckham Rye, 13;
books read, 14;
learns drawing from Mr Pars, 15;
apprenticed to Basire, 17;
joins the Academy under Moser, 21;
designs _Morning_, or _Glad Day_, 22;
falls in love with Polly Wood, 23;
marries Catherine Boucher, 24;
meets Flaxman, 30;
goes to Mrs Mathew's parties, 30;
on war, 34-5;
lodges at 23 Green Street, 37;
moves to 27 Broad Street, 39;
nurses Robert, 40;
moves to 28 Poland Street, 40;
engraves after Stothard, 44;
Robert imparts method of engraving, 45;
comments on Lavater's Aphorisms, 51;
and Swedenborg, 55-80;
reads and annotates _Angelic Wisdom_, 62-5;
subscribes his name to tenets of the New Church, 66;
on Swedenborg, 72;
takes leave of Swedenborg, 80;
among the rebels, 89;
wears the _bonnet rouge_, 89;
on sex, 94-6;
moves to 13 Hercules Buildings, 98;
engraves _Europe: A Prophecy_, 99, 101;
illustrates Buerger's _Lenore_, 111;
goes to Felpham, 117;
paints miniatures, 119-21;
learns Greek from Hayley, 121;
returns to London, 127;
South Molton Street, 127;
vision clears after visit to Truchsess gallery, 129;
and Sir J. Reynolds, 156-9;
writes descriptive catalogue, 161;
and Chaucer, 162-3;
vision of Jesus Christ, 165-8;
new friends, 172;
and Varley, 172-3;
removes to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, 180;
sells his collection of engravings, 180;
and Book of Job, 182-86;
and Dante, 187;
illness, 187;
death, 188

Blue-stockings, the, 26-36

Boehme, Jacob, 23, 47, 49, 51, 56, 58, 72, 118, 165, 172

Bond Street, 21

_Book for a Rainy Day_, 30

_Book of Ahania_, 110

_Book of Job_, 181-2

_Book of Los_, 110

_Book of Urizen_, 106

Boucher, Catherine, 24

Bourdon, 129

Bousset, 61

Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, 123

Brahma, 109

Bray, Mrs, 160, 162

Breughel, 129

Bronte, Charlotte, 177

_Brook Kerith_, 178

Brooke, Mrs, 30

Bull and Bush, North End, Hampstead, 174

Bunyan, John, 140

Buerger, 111, 112

Burke, Edmund, 85, 89

Burney, Dr, 29

Burney, Fanny, 28, 42, 85, 86, 170

Butler, Samuel, 166

Butts, Thomas, 121, 124, 125, 127, 132

Calvert, Edward, 175, 176

_Candide_, 28

Caracci, 126

Carter, Mrs, 26, 27, 28, 30

_Castle of Otranto_, 34

Catherine of Siena, St, 53, 133

Chapone, Mrs, 30, 31

Chatterton, 14

Chaucer, 161, 162, 163

Chaucer's _Canterbury Pilgrims_, 159

Chesterfield, Lord, _Letters to his Son_, 27

Christ, 152

_Christ and the Woman of Samaria_, 176

_Clod, the_, 104

Coleridge, S. T., 82, 170

Collins' Farm, North End, Hampstead, 174

Correggio, 126, 172

Cosmos, the, 134, 147, 183, 185

Cowper, W., 82, 116, 123, 124, 130

_Cowper, Life of_, 130

_Crime and Punishment_, 98

Croce, Benedetto, 193

Cromek, Robert Hartley, 154-6, 159, 160, 165

Cumberland, George, 172

Dante, 73, 114, 133, 187, 192

Deism, 144-5

_De Profundis_, 178

Designs for Job, 183-6

_Dialogues of the Dead_, 26

Dogma, 192

Dostoieffski, 98

Dualism, 143

Duerer, Albert, 16, 17, 41, 42, 129, 172

_Earl Godwin_, 42

Ego-theism, 71

Elihu, 185

_Elinor_, 112

Eliot, George, 112

Eliphaz, 184

Elizabethan age, 16

_Emmet, the_, 193

Engleheart, 160

Enitharmon, 99, 100, 108

Eno, 111

_Enquiry concerning Political Justice_, 82

_Epipsychidion_, 95

_Essay on Old Maids_, 121

Essenes, the, 61

Europe, 109

_Europe: A Prophecy_, 99-101

_Evelina_, 42

Ezekiel, 137, 144, 181, 189

Ezra, 118

_Fair Elinor_, 34

Felpham, 117, 119, 125, 126

Fenelon, 50, 53

Fielding, Copley, 172

Fingal, 14

Flaxman, 22, 24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 159, 160,
171

Flaxman, Maria, 114

Flemish _picturesque_, 125

Florentine School of Art, 16

Fludd, 23

Foote, Samuel, 49

Fordyce, Dr, 85

France, 109

Francis of Assisi, St, 45

Franklin, 96

French Revolution, 85, 87, 89, 90-2, 101, 118

Fuseli, 24, 81, 171-2

Fuzon, 110, 111

Garrick, 115

Gaskell, Mrs, 177

_Gates of Paradise_, 178

Genlis, Madame de, 86

_Ghost of a Flea_, 173

Gibbon, Edward, 115

Gilchrist, 45

_Glad Day_, 42

Gnosticism, 134

Godwin, W., 82-4, 86, 87, 88, 92, 145, 172, 190

Goethe, 30, 36, 54, 170

Goldsmith, Oliver, 18

Gordon, Lord George, 23

Gothic architecture, 17

Grand Style, 125

Gregory, Dr, 85

Guyon, Madame, 23, 47, 50

_Gwen, King of Norway_, 34

Habakkuk, 129

Halls of Los, 122

Hamilton, 42

Hardy, 88

Harlow, 160

Haydn, 170

Hayley, William, 114-130, 137, 139-42, 153-4, 165, 171

_Head of Romney_, 153

Heath, James, 160

Heaven and Hell, 78

Hegel, 181

Hell, 57

Hemskerck, Martin, 16

Herbert, George, 176

Hervey, 49, 50

Hesketh, Lady, 116

Highland Society, 14

Hogarth, 42, 43, 158

Holbein, Hans, 129

Holcroft, 88

Holmes, James, 172, 175

Hoppner, 162

_How sweet I roam'd_, 16, 33

Hume, 36

Hunt, W. H., 172

Ibsen, 190

Imagination, 122, 125

Imlay, Charles, 86

Immanence, 192

Inspiration, 122, 132, 133

Isaiah, 118

Jacob, 169

Jefferson, 87

_Jerusalem_, 113, 131, 132, 142, 149, 151

Jesus Christ, 165-8, 189, 190-1

Job, Book of, 76

John, Saint, 152

Johnson, bookseller, 22, 81, 82, 86, 90, 123

Johnson, Dr, 20, 27, 28, 36, 47, 48, 145, 192

Johnson, Rev. John, 119, 122

Jonah, 181

Jonson, Ben, 14, 16, 31, 33

_Joseph of Arimathea_, 18

Juniper Hall, 85

Kaufmann, Angelica, 17

Keim, 61

_King Edward the Third_, 33

_King Edward and Queen Elinor_, 42

Klopstock's _Messiah_, 122

Landseer, 161

_Laocoon_, 179

Lavater, 50-4, 171

Law, William, 48, 165

Le Brun, 21

_Lenore_, Buerger's, 111

Linnell, John, 172, 173-5, 181

_Little Girl Found_, 103

_Little Girl Lost_, 103

_Little Tom the Sailor_, 119

Locke, John, 109

London, Bishop of, 29

Los, 75, 107, 108, 109, 139, 144, 194

Luke, St, 185

Luvah, 144

Lyca, 104

Lyttelton, Lord, 26, 29

Lytton, Bulwer, 82, 173, 178

Mackintosh, 89

Macpherson, 14, 15, 42

_Mad Song_, 33

Maimonides, 54

_Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, 75, 81, 176

Martin, Rev. John, 173, 176

Mathew, Mrs, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 39, 44, 119

Mathew, Rev. Henry, 29, 30, 32

Memory, 122, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 147

Mendelssohn, Moses, 54

Meyer, 115

Michael Angelo, 16, 17, 18, 21, 42, 44, 117, 126, 129, 139, 157, 158, 171

Milton, John, 44, 76, 105, 118, 123-4, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 151

_Milton_, 122, 124, 131, 132, 137-142, 152

Miniature Painting, 119, 120, 121, 125

Montagu, Mrs, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 35

Moore, George, 61, 178

More, Hannah, 28, 115

Morland, George, 173

_Morning_, or _Glad Day_, 22

Morris, Mr, 71

Mortimer, 42

Moses, 182, 183

Mulgrave, Lord, 29

Mulready, W., 172

Muses, the, 122

_My Silks and Fine Array_, 33

_Mysterious Mother_, 34

Mysticism, German, 68

Napoleon, 170

Narbonne, M. de, 85

Nature, 13, 125, 146, 149

_Nelly O'Brien_, 158

Newman, Cardinal, 176

Newton, Sir Isaac, 109

Nietzsche, 54, 133, 139, 140, 170, 190

_Night Thoughts_, Young's, 112

No Popery Riots, 23

North American States, 44

North End, Hampstead, 174, 176

Odin, 109

_On Homer's Poetry_, 179

_On Virgil_, 179, 180

Oothoon, 94-5

Opie, Mrs, 115

Oram, 30

Orc, 99, 100, 109, 110

Ord, Mrs, 28

_Ossian_, 14

Ossian, 105

Paine, Tom, 82, 86-8, 89, 93, 96, 98, 144, 145, 190

Palamabron, 109

Palmer, Samuel, 172, 175-6

Pantheism, 71, 72, 106, 107, 143

Pantheism, Hindoo, 191

Paracelsus, 23, 47, 58, 118, 172

_Paradise Lost_, 136

Parker, 39, 40

Pars, Mr, 15

Pascal, 28

Passion, 76, 77, 147-8

_Pastorals of Virgil_, 180

Paul, St, 134, 135, 140, 146, 181

Paulus, Dr, 61

_Pebble, the_, 154

_Penance of Jane Shore_, 42

Pepys, Sir Lucas, 29

Percy's _Reliques_, 14

Phillips, Captain, 29

Pilgrimage to Canterbury, 160-1

Piozzi, Mrs, 84

Plato, 109, 149, 152

_Poetical Sketches_, 33, 44

_Poison Tree_, 104

Pope, A., 114

Portland, Duchess of, 26

Price, Dr, 82

Priestley, Dr, 82, 87, 93

Proverbs of Hell, 76

Pythagoras, 109

Quakers, 174

Quintilian, 28

Radcliffe, Mrs, 34

Raphael, 16, 21, 42, 126, 157

Reign of Terror, 89, 100, 102, 117, 190

Rembrandt, 42, 158, 171

Renan, 61

Repression, 189-90, 191

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 118, 126, 156-9, 193

Reynolds' _Discourses_, 157-8, 193

Richmond, George, 176-7

_Rights of Man_, 88

Rintrah, 109

Ritson's _English Songs_, 44

Robinson, Crabb, 161, 177, 187

Romano, Julio, 16

Romney, 115, 116, 118, 119, 123, 124, 130

_Romney, Life of_, 130

Rose, Samuel, 127

Rotten Row, Hampstead, 174

Rousseau, 28, 36, 109, 145

Rowley, 14

Royal Academy, 21, 25

Rubens, 21, 42

Samson, Dr, 99

Satan, 76, 139, 183, 184, 186

Schiavonetti, Lewis, 155, 160

Schiavonetti, Niccolo, 160

_Schoolboy, the_, 104

Schweitzer, 61

Scott, Sir W., 14, 170

Seven Planes, 134

Seward, Anna, 115

Sex, 147-8

Shakespeare, 14, 26, 27, 33, 44, 76, 118, 132, 133

Sharpe, 123

Shelley, 71, 84, 95, 133, 172

Shields, F., 112

_Shipwreck_, after Romney, 130, 153

Skofield, 127

Smelt, Mr, 29

Smith, J. T., 30, 39

Socrates, 109

_Song of Liberty_, 93

_Song of Los_, 108

_Songs of Experience_, 70

_Songs of Innocence_, 69, 102, 103

Sotho, 109

Spencer, 31

Spencer's _Faery Queen_, 14

Stael, Madame de, 86

Stothard, 22, 24, 44, 112, 114, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 171

_Strange Story_, 173

Strauss, 61

Swedenborg, 30, 39, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55-80, 58, 59, 105, 110, 118, 137,
138, 143, 160, 187, 190, 191, 192, 194

Swinburne, 14, 33, 53

Symbolism, 136

Tabard Inn, 162

Talleyrand, 85

Tatham, F., 177

Tharmas, 144

_The Divine Image_, 69

_The Little Vagabond_, 71

_Thel_, 66-9

Thelwall, 86

Theosophy, 134

Theotormon, 94-5

Theresa, St, 23, 47, 50

Thomson, 14

Thornton, Dr, 180

_Thus Spake Zarathustra_, 190

_Tiger, the_, 193

Tiriel, 66, 67

Titian, 42, 172

Tolstoi, 193

Tooke, Horne, 86

Townshend, Charles, 87

Transcendence, 192

Trismegistus, 109

_Triumphs of Temper_, 114, 115, 121

Truchsess, Count, 129

Urizen, 66, 67, 75, 93, 99, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 139, 142, 144, 194

Varley, Cornelius, 173

Varley, John, 172-3, 174

Venetian art, 117

Venetian _finesse_, 125

Vesey, Mrs, 28

Vinci, Leonardo da, 129, 185

_Visions of the Daughters of Albion_, 94-5, 97

Voltaire, 28, 36, 109, 145

Wainewright, T. G., 177-8

Walpole, Horace, 26, 28, 34, 85

War, 34, 35, 43, 44

Warren, 96

Washington, 96

Water Colour Society, 172

Watson, Caroline, 130

Watteau, 129

Webster, 33

_Werther_, 28

Wesley, John, 23, 48, 49, 50, 66, 139, 140, 165

West, Sir Benjamin, 173

Whitefield, 23, 49, 50, 66, 139, 140, 145, 165

Wilberforce, 177

Wilde, Oscar, 178

Wilkinson, Garth, 53, 68, 71, 72

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 82, 84-6, 88, 89, 92, 190

Wood, Polly, 23

Woollett, 17, 18

Wordsworth, 13, 170

Yeats, W. B., 112, 132

Young, Edward, 112

_Zanoni_, 173

_Zoas, the Four_, 113, 124, 131, 142, 145, 182

Zophar, 184

_Printed in Great Britain by_

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED

WOKING AND LONDON

Footnotes:

[1] This fact was first pointed out by Mr Laurence Binyon.

[2] _Jerusalem_, 72. 50-52.

[3] Prov. viii. 27-31.

[4] _Jerusalem_, 15. 61-69.

[5] Thirteenth Discourse.

[6] Genesis xlvi. 13.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors have been silently closed while those requiring interpretation have been left open.

The following misprints have been corrected:
"no" corrected to "not" (page 42)
"correponds" corrected to "corresponds" (page 56)
"Hesbeth" corrected to "Hesketh" (page 116)

Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and period usage after abbreviations have been retained from the original.

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