Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/460

 clear—the visions of Swedenborg and Dante as of the same kind. Dante was the greater poet. He, too, was wrong,—in occupying his mind about political objects. Yet this did not appear to affect his estimation of Dante's genius, or his opinion of the truth of Dante's visions. Indeed, when he even declared Dante to be an atheist, it was accompanied by expression of the highest admiration; "though," said he, "Dante saw devils where I saw none."

I put down in my journal the following insulated remarks: Jacob Boehmen was placed among the divinely inspired men. He praised also the designs to Law's Translation of Boehmen. "Michael Angelo could not have surpassed them."—"Bacon, Locke, and Newton, are the three great teachers of atheism, or Satan's doctrine."—"Irving is a highly gifted man: he is a sent man; but they who are sent sometimes go further than they ought." "I saw nothing but good in Calvin's house; in Luther's there were harlots." . . . He declared his opinion that the earth is flat, not round, and just as I had objected,—the circumnavigation,—dinner was announced. Objections were seldom of any use. The wildest of his assertions was made with the veriest indifference of tone, as if altogether insignificant. It respected the natural and spiritual worlds. By way of example of the difference between them, he said: "You never saw the spiritual Sun? I have. I saw him on Primrose Hill. He said, Do you take me for the Greek Apollo? No! That (pointing to the sky), that is the Greek Apollo: he is Satan." Not everything was thus absurd. There were glimpses and flashes of truth and beauty: as when he compared moral with physical evil. "Who shall say what God thinks evil? That is a wise tale of the Mahomedans,—of the angel of the Lord who murdered the Infant." (The Hermit of Parnell, I suppose.) "Is not every infant that dies a natural death in reality slain by an angel?" And when he joined to the assurance of his happiness that of his having suffered, and that it was necessary, he added: "There is suffering in Heaven; for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is the capacity of pain." I include among the glimpses of truth this assertion: "I know what is true by internal conviction;—a doctrine is stated; my heart tells me it must be true." I remarked, in confirmation of it, that, to an unlearned man, what are called the external evidences of religion can carry no conviction with them; and this he assented to.

'After my first evening with him at Aders', I made the remark in