Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/379

 philosopher, who learns or acquires all he knows from others, must be full of contradictions.' And elsewhere, more definitely, on this subject of generalization he says: 'Real effect is making out the parts, and it is nothing else but that.'

Expressive of the special creed of Blake, to whom invention and meaning were all in all, and of his low estimate of the great rhetoricians in painting,—Correggio, the Venetians, Rubens, and those whom we weak mortals have been wont to admire as great colourists,—is such a note as this, at the beginning of the Second Discourse:—'The laboured works of journeymen employed by Correggio, Titian, Veronese, and all the Venetians, ought not to be shown to the young artist as the works of original conception, any more than the works of Strange, Bartolozzi, or WooUett. They are works of manual labour.'

Blake cherished his visionary tendency as an essential function of imagination, 'Mere enthusiasm,' he here declares, 'is the all in all.' And again,—'The man who asserts that there is no such thing as softness in art, and that everything is definite and determinate' (which is what Blake was ever asserting), 'has not been told this by practice, but by inspiration and vision; because vision is determinate and perfect and he copies that without fatigue. Everything seen is definite and determinate. Softness is produced by comparative strength and weakness, alone, in the marking of the forms. I say these principles would never be found out by the study of nature, without con- or in-nate science.'

With no more than justice he remarks on the very weakest feature in Sir Joshua's system: 'Reynolds' opinion was, that genius may be taught, and that all pretence to inspiration is a lie or deceit, to say the least of it. If it is deceit, the whole Bible is madness. This opinion' (of Sir Joshua's) 'originates in the Greeks calling the Muses daughters of Memory,' In the same spirit, and with truth too, he of the