Page:The poetical works of William Blake - lyrical and miscellaneous.djvu/22

 x PREFATORY MEMOIR.

of Blake to admiration and reverence, withou slurring over those other considerations which need to be plainly and fully set forth if we would obtain any real idea of the man as he was,--of his total unlikeness to his contemporaries, of his amazing genius and noble performances in two arts, of the height by which he transcended other men, and the incapacity which he always evinced for performing at all what others accomplish easily. He could do vactly more than they, but he could eldore do the like. By some unknown process, he had soared to the top of a cloud-capped Alp while they were.crouching in the valley: but to reach a middle station on the mountain was what they could readily manage step by step, while Blake found that ordinary achievement impracti- cable. He could not and he would not do it: the' want of will, or rather the utter alienation of will, the resolve to soar (which was natural to him), and not to walk (which was unnatural and re- pulsive), constituted, or counted in stead of, an actual want of power. CoZd Blake think, and embody his thoughts, like other men ? There are instances in which he both could do so, and has done it: but certain it is, regarding him in his most characteristic moods, that mostly he would not.. aud, in the case of so spacious, daring, and intuitive a mind, so vivid, uncompromising, ex- clusive, and peremptory a character, the aversion, when it reached a certain height, amounted to incapability. For "aversion" we might perhaps substitute the word "perversity-." Blake was the most perverse of mortals, except to his own ideal, his own inspiration. To these he was loyal beyond praise, and beyond words: to aught else