Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/119

 Rh ought to know that what is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the ancients considered what is not too explicit as the fittest for instruction, because it rouses the faculties to act. I name Moses, Solomon, Esop, Homer, Plato.

But as you have favoured me with your remarks on my design, permit me in return to defend it against a mistaken one, which is, that I have supposed Malevolence without a cause. Is not merit in one a cause of envy in another, and serenity and happiness and beauty a cause of malevolence? But want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser s passion, not the thief's.

I have therefore proved your reasonings ill-proportioned, which you can never prove my figures to be. They are those of Michael Angelo, Raphael and the antique, and of the best living models. I perceive that your eye is perverted by caricature prints, which ought not to abound so much as they do. Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than