Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/463

 was this very stanza which threw him almost into an hysterical rapture. His delight in Wordsworth's poetry was intense. Nor did it seem less, notwithstanding the reproaches he continually cast on his worship of nature; which, in the mind of Blake, constituted atheism. The combination of the warmest praise with imputations which, from another, would assume the most serious character, and the liberty he took to interpret as he pleased, rendered it as difficult to be offended as to reason with him. The eloquent descriptions of nature in Wordsworth's poems were conclusive proofs of atheism: "For whoever believes in nature," said B., "disbelieves in God; for Nature is the work of the devil." On my obtaining from him the declaration that the Bible was the Word of God, I referred to the commencement of Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But I gained nothing by this; for I was triumphantly told that this God was not Jehovah, but the Elohim; and the doctrine of the Gnostics was repeated with sufficient consistency to silence one so unlearned as myself. The Preface to The Excursion, especially the verses quoted from Book I. of The Recluse, so troubled him as to bring on a fit of illness. Those lines he singled out:—

"Does Mr. W. think he can surpass Jehovah?" There was a copy of the whole passage in his own hand in the volume of Wordsworth's poems returned to my chambers after his death. There was this note at the end—"Solomon, when he married Pharaoh's daughter, and 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 "unalarmed," and was permitted. Jehovah dropped a tear and followed him, by His spirit, into the abstract void. It is called the Divine mercy. Sarah dwells in it, but mercy does not dwell in him." Some of the poems he maintained were from the Holy Ghost, others from the Devil. I lent him the 8vo edition, in two vols. (1815), of W.'s poems, which he had in his possession at the time of his death. They were returned to me then. I did not recognise the pencil notes he had made in them to be his for some time, and was on the point of rubbing them out when I made the discovery; and they were preserved.