Page:Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, etc., being selections from the Remains of Henry Crabb Robinson.djvu/45

 DIARY ACCOUNT OF BLAKE Ode which he most enjoyed were the most obscure & those I the least like & comprehend.

Jan. 6, 1826. A call on Blake. I hardly feel it worth while to write down his conversation. It is so much a repetition of his former talk. He was very cordial today. I had procured him two subscriptns for his Job from Geo Procter & Basil Montagu. I paid £1 on each. This probably put him in spirits, more than he was aware of—he spoke of his being richer than ever in havg learnd to know me, & he told Mrs A[ders] he & I were nearly of an opinion. Yet I have practised no deception intentionally unless silence be so. He renewed his complaints, blended with his admiration of Wordsworth. The oddest thing he said was that he had been commandd to do certain things that is to write abt Milton And that he was applauded for refusing. He struggled with the Angels & was victor—his wife joined in the conversation.

Feb. 18 . . . Called on Blake, an amusing chat with him but still no novelty. The same round of extravagant & mad doctrines which I shall not now repeat but merely notice their application. He gave me, copied out by himself, Wordsworth's preface to his Excursion. At the end he has added this note. [Cf Appendix, pp. 159 et seq.'] "Solomon when he married Pharaoh's daughter & became a convert to the Heathen mythology talked exactly in this way of Jehovah as a very inferior object of man's contemplations, he also passed him by unalarmed & was permitted. Jehovah dropped a tear & followed him by his spirit into the abstract void. It is called the Divine Mercy. Satan dwells in it, but mercy does not dwell in him."

Of Wordsw[orth] he talked as before. Some of his writings proceed from the Holy Ghost, but then others are the work of the Devil. However I found on this subject Blake's language more in conformity with Orthodox

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