Page:The sanity of William Blake.djvu/52

 Rh vigour of delight; who feels that he must show the wise old people how they have forgotten the glory of life. So far as the Jerusalem serves any ordinary purpose, we may well consider it illogical and having but little bearing upon the practical needs and facts of life. And indeed, because a child's wild joy in liberty finds no place in an educational code, many will hold it to be inimical to the ideals of education, and therefore ill-purposed and lacking in sanity. Enthusiasm and imagination, unless severely curbed by convention and logic, are considered by the majority as intellectually dangerous. Nevertheless undisciplined joy and boundless enthusiasm for the ideals of life are very real properties of life. Indeed, they come very near to being the simplest expression of life itself. And no wise man will quarrel with the poet's gifts, even if he do not love life enough to desire them.

Charles Lamb, keenest and gentlest of critics, declares that, if a writer would be popular,