Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/385

 A STRANGE BOOK 369 And so when death gives gold of good, From his dear bed away, More hearts than those around that stood, Feel light from death's new day." As before observed, I have cited only from the more spontaneous poems, springing directly from the native genius and mother wit, leaving aside the longer compositions whose materials were quarried by laborious studies, such as the " Hahnemann," "Fourier," "Tegndr," " Dalton," " Swedenborg," though these likewise contain many noteworthy things I have gone upon the principle well expressed by Blake (whether correct or not in his application of it) in his " Descriptive Catalogue " : " The Greek Muses are daughters of Mnemosyne or Memory, and not of Inspiration or Imagination, therefore not authors of such sublime conceptions." And now, in conclusion, I may confess that pon- dering once more how much that is pure and wise and beautiful is contained in this almost unknown book, notwithstanding all the wilful disadvantages under which it was written, I half repent me of the severity of certain of the strictures I have passed upon portions of it; though the sharpest of these strictures were but the very same which Wilkinson had previously passed upon a genius as great, a visionary as genuine as his own over-idolised master ; upon one who had nobler fire in his spirit, a more genial heart in his breast, than the ever -placid dogmatic Swede; upon one who soared in lyric raptures of which the other was as unsusceptible as a stone; upon one who was free from that dreary, monstrous, methodic madness which kept piecing and 2 A