Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/94

 in fact, had a bonâ fide if convulsive hold of the super-sensual, there was much that was german to William Blake, much that still remains noble and interesting.

In the painter's small library the Aphorisms became one of his most favourite volumes. This well-worn copy contains a series of marginal notes, neatly written in pen and ink—it being his habit to make such in the books he read—which speak to the interest it excited in him. On the title-page occurs a naïve token of affection: below the name Lavater is inscribed 'Will. Blake,' and around the two names, the outline of a heart.

Lavater's final Aphorism tells the reader, 'If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these as affected you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you, and then show your copy to whom you please.' Blake showed his notes to Fuseli; who said one assuredly could read their writer's character in them.

All old! 'This should be written in letters of gold on our temples,' are the endorsements accorded such an announcement as 'The object of your love is your God;' or again, 'Joy and grief decide character. What exalts prosperity? What embitters grief? What leaves us indifferent? What interests us? As the interest of man, so his God, as his God so is he.'

But the annotator sometimes dissents; as from this: 'You enjoy with wisdom or with folly, as the gratification of your appetites capacitates or unnerves your powers.' False! is the emphatic denial, 'for weak is the joy which is never wearied.' On one Aphorism, in which 'frequent laughing,' and 'the scarcer smile of harmless quiet,' are enumerated as signs respectively 'of a little mind,' or 'of a noble heart;' while the abstaining from laughter merely not to offend, &c. is praised as 'a power unknown to many a vigorous mind;' Blake exclaims, 'I hate scarce smiles; I love laughing!' 'A sneer is often the sign of heartless malignity,' says Lavater. Damn sneerers! echoes Blake. To Lavater's censure