Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/466

 writer, the judgment of the people is not to be respected?" was writ by another hand and mind from the rest of these Prefaces. Perhaps they are the opinion of a landscape-painter. Imagination is the divine vision, not of the world, nor of man, nor from man,—as he is a natural man. Imagination has nothing to do with memory.'

In these years Blake's health was rapidly failing. He was a perpetual sufferer from intermittent attacks of cold and dysentery (evidently), as his letters to Mr. Linnell show. The letters would never, in fact, have been written, but for illness on his part, and Mr. Linnell's residence at Hampstead. So long as their writer was well, and Mr. Linnell always in Cirencester Place, there had been no occasion for letters. They are characteristic, and explain what he suffered from.

Here is one: —

February 1st, 1826.

—

I am forced to write, because I cannot come to you. And this on two accounts. First, I omitted to desire you would come and take a mutton chop with us the day you go to Cheltenham, and I will go with you to the coach. Also, I will go to Hampstead to see Mrs. Linnell on Sunday, but will return before dinner (I mean if you set off before that). And second, I wish to have a copy of Job to show to Mr. Chantrey.

For I am again laid up by a cold in my stomach. The Hampstead air, as it always did, so I fear it always will do this, except it be the morning air: and that, in my cousin's time, I found I could bear with safety, and perhaps benefit. I believe my constitution to be a good one, but it has many peculiarities that no one but myself can know. When I was young, Hampstead, Highgate, Hornsey, Muswell Hill, and even Islington, and all places north of London, always laid me up the day after, and sometimes two or three days, with precisely the same complaint, and the same torment of the stomach; easily removed, but excruciating while it lasts, and enfeebling for some time after. Sir Francis Bacon would say, it is want of discipline in mountainous places. Sir Francis Bacon is a liar: no discipline will turn one man into another, even in the least particle; and such discipline I call