Page:The sanity of William Blake.djvu/13

 Rh virtues. The schools judge only by their standards of examination, and cast out a poet as unfit. The professions measure by the success of their sleekest members; and, as it is a law of nature that the eccentric shall not survive, they starve him. The academies of Art can judge of nothing that is not so firmly and viciously correct that all fear of its kindling the imagination vanishes. Yet the schools might remember they were founded by men who would pity their present professors; the learned societies, that they are stagnating for lack of great thinkers; and the teachers of art, that while prating of genius they are perpetrating bathos. Even the churches scatter their bread upon the waters because they dare not eat it; they have still faith enough to know they will not starve so long as that bread persists, as it ever will, in returning after many days. Unfortunately it is only after we have killed the prophets that their greatness dawns upon our close-hedged understanding.

In a word, no man can faithfully criticize art only by the rules of that art. No man can measure the starry heights who believes that trigonometry is always sufficing. No