Page:The sanity of William Blake.djvu/16

 Rh kinds and divers colours. If we study Mr. Swinburne we shall be asked to believe that our prophet wrote like a libertine, while living like a saint; that, preaching infidelity, he was yet faithful beyond the manner of men. On the other hand, some of his most devoted interpreters compel us to believe that while he was actually teaching sublime truth, he surpassed even his interpreters in obscurity. At any rate, Messrs. Ellis and Yeats invite us to substitute an absolutely unintelligible mysticism for some of the grandest symbolic writing the world has ever produced.

If such great authorities as these, to whom we are most deeply indebted for their real devotion to Blake, and yet whose discovery of Blake's system is more ingenious than important, adduce such equivocal evidence of his sanity, we are perhaps justified in questioning it. Yet upon a time, many years ago, it happened that I found a sane man in a lunatic asylum, his certificates of insanity being drawn up and endorsed by authorities legally qualified for the purpose, though certainly incompetent. And not infrequently in the world's history a judicial verdict, instigated by a passionate multitude,