Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/257

 dwell upon the beauty of this nuptial hymn; to bid men remark what eloquence, what subtlety, what ardour of wisdom, what splendour of thought, is here; how far it outruns, not in daring alone but in sufficiency, all sayings of minor mystics who were not also poets; how much of lofty love and of noble faith underlies and animates these rapid and fervent words; what greatness of spirit and of speech there was in the man who, living as Blake lived, could write as Blake has written. Those who cannot see what is implied may remain unable to tolerate what is expressed; and those who can read aright need no index of ours. Before we dismiss the matter from view, it may be permissible to cast up in a rough and rapid way the sum of Blake's teaching in these books, if only because this was also the doctrine or moral of his entire life and life's work. I will therefore, as leave has been given, append a note extracted from a manuscript now before me, which attempts to embody and enforce, if only by dint of pure and simple exposition, the pantheistic evangel here set forth in so strange a fashion. Thus at least I read the passage; if misinterpreted, my correspondent has to thank his own laxity of expression. "These poems or essays at prophecy" (he says) "seem to me to represent in an obscure and forcible manner the real naked question to which all theologies and all philosophies must in the end be pared down. Strained and filtered clear of extraneous matter, pruned of foreign fruit and artificial foliage, this radical question lies between Theism and Pantheism. When the battles of the creeds have been all fought out, this battle will remain to fight. I do not see much likelihood on either hand of success or defeat. Faith and reason, evidence and report, are alike inadequate to decide the day. This prophet or that prophet, this God or that God, is not here under debate. Histories, religions, all things born of rumour or circumstance, accident or change, are out of court; are, for the moment, of necessity set aside. Gentile or Jew, Christian or Pagan, Eastern or Western, can but be equal to us for the moment. No single figure, no single book, stands out for special judgment or special belief. On the right hand, let us say (employing the old figure of speech), is the Theist the 'man of God,' if you may take his own word for it; the believer in a separate or divisible deity, capable or conceivably capable of existence apart from ours who conceive of it; a conscious and absolute Creator. On the left hand is the Pantheist; to whom such a creed is mainly incredible and wholly insufficient. His creed is or should be much like that of your prophet here;" (I must observe in passing that my correspondent seems so unable to conceive of a comment apart from the text, an exponent who is not an evangelist,—so inclined to confuse the various functions of critic and of disciple, and assume that you must mean to preach or teach whatever doctrine you may have to explain—in a