Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/121

 Rh so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but mediately to the understanding or reason? Such is true painting, and such was alone valued by the Greeks and the best modern artists. Consider what Lord Bacon says: "Sense sends over to imagination before reason have judged, and reason sends over to imagination before the decree can be acted." (See Advancement of Learnings. part ii. p. 47 of first edition.)

But I am happy to find a great majority of fellow-mortals who can elucidate my visions, and particularly they have been elucidated by children, who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my pictures than I even hoped. Neither youth nor childhood is folly or incapacity. Some children are fools, and so are some old men. But there is a vast majority on the side of imagination or spiritual sensation.

To engrave after another painter is infinitely more laborious than to engrave one's own inventions. And of the size you require my price has been thirty guineas, and I cannot afford to do it for less. I had twelve for the head I sent you as a specimen; but after my own designs I could do at least six times the quantity of labour in the same