Page:The sanity of William Blake.djvu/64

 Rh hopes. The genius, having this power in him as the secret of his own inspiration knows how this same secret orders all things. So that, for instance, he has knowledge of the joy in all true sons of God, and sees their joy in a vision. He is one with the spirit that uplifts the skylark and makes him scatter his little song broadcast over the earth; he sees the truth of it and sings himself of it in glorious verse. With Blake the Imagination is the Life itself, the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

And even in fiction the real genius surpasses altogether his actual experience of life and men. He knows them, and writes not of how he believes they would speak in this or that circumstance, but of what he has unconsciously visualized and therefore knows to be true of life. Indeed, he has visions of the men and women he is creating, though he does not speak of his inspiration in such words. He will tell you, and I speak of one friend of my own, that he saw this or that invented incident, and he therefore knows it is true. This visionary power is altogether different from the mere relation of events of which he may have been the spectator. It is the difference