Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/459

 there is no use in education,—he hastily rejoined: "There is no use in education—I hold it wrong—it is the great Sin; it is eating of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, That was the fault of Plato: he knew of nothing but the virtues and vices. There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes." On my asking whether there is nothing absolutely evil in what man does, he answered: "I am no judge of that—perhaps not in God's eyes." Nothwithstanding this, he, however, at the same time, spoke of error as being in Heaven; for on my asking whether Dante was pure in writing his Vision,—"Pure!" said Blake, "is there any purity in God's eyes? No! He chargeth His angels with folly." He even extended this liability to error to the Supreme Being. "Did He not repent Him that He had made Nineveh?" My Journal has the remark that it is easier to retail his personal remarks than to reconcile those which seemed to be in conformity with the most opposed abstract systems.'

Perhaps, indeed, the attempt to methodise them into a system was so much labour lost? The key to the wild and strange rhapsodies Blake would utter can be supplied by love, but not by the intellect. To go with Blake, it almost required that a man should have the mind of an artist—and an artist of a peculiar kind—or one strongly in unison with that class of mind.

'He spoke with seeming complacency of his own life in connection with art. In becoming an artist he acted by command: the Spirits said to him, "Blake, be an artist!" His eye glistened while he spoke of the joy of devoting himself to divine art alone. "Art is inspiration. When Michael Angelo, or Raphael, in their day, or Mr. Flaxman, does one of his fine things, he does them in the spirit." Of fame he said: "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit; I want nothing; I am quite happy." This was confirmed to me on my subsequent interviews with him. His distinction between the natural and spiritual worlds was very confused. Incidentally, Swedenborg was mentioned:—he declared him to be a Divine teacher; he had done, and would do, much good: yet he did wrong in endeavouring to explain to the Reason what it could not comprehend. He seemed to consider—but that was not