Page:The sanity of William Blake.djvu/31

 Rh no more the water-brooks. And it brings us right up to the clue that leads to the understanding of William Blake.

He was a child throughout his life; but there was built upon this foundation of sublime insanity a mighty superstructure or heroic endurance and manly fidelity to the thing he knew to be true; of patient fortitude and womanly tenderness towards the weak and suffering. His power of scorn, that mighty weapon, and his potent pity, so lavishly given, had not developed the gentle boy into the adorable man, but that he never left his childhood behind him. Hence largely the sane world's dislike of his manners and the common belief that he died in Bedlam.

This fact of Blake's childlike nature makes it easy to understand how it is that many, even of those who are but little tainted with the vulgar sanity, claim that his intellect could not always be trusted. But I can find no evidence anywhere in his painting or his writing that, where clear intellect was needed, he could not supply more of it and fresher than most men of learning. His grasp of facts, his right estimate of their real value, his pity for the