Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/421

314 children, eagerly interposed, 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake, but may I ask where you saw this?' Here, madam,' answered Blake, touching his forehead. The point of view from which Blake himself regarded his visions was by no means the mad view those ignorant of the man have fancied. He would candidly confess that they were not literal matters of fact, but phenomena seen by his imagination, realities none the less for that, but transacted within the realm of mind." We must say that there is something baffling in this double-minded assertion. That ideas in "the realm of mind" become, where the faculty of imagination is strong, equivalent in importance to realities, is never questioned; it is a waste of our interest and sympathy to claim for them more than a mental life, since no end can be answered by it, unless it be to suggest an unnecessary charge of unsoundness of mind; and, on the other hand, the want of judgment displayed in thus uselessly tampering with the feelings of others exposes a man to a similar charge on different grounds. But even in regard to what is called vision by the inward eye, there are certain limitations which should not be forgotten. Fuseli wished he could "paint up to what he saw." We have heard of other instances where this clearness of mental vision was laid claim to, where nevertheless, the artist made abundance of various preparatory sketches. It appears to us that if the interior image does indeed possess the actual completeness of life, there is nothing to do but copy what is before the mind's eye. We know painters of the highest imagination who do not possess this extravagant sensibility and completeness of parts in the regions of conception. They have the animation of a labouring, inward idea, which glimmers before the vision. They have judgment and taste, by which they know when it is successfully translated into outward form. But all the greatest painters have referred to and depended most minutely on the aid of natural models for the whole series of facts by means of which the image was to be realised on canvas.