Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/296

 262 Into the myth of the harrow and horses of Palamabron, more Asiatic in tone than any other of Blake's, and full of the vast proportion and formless fervour of Hindoo legends, we will not haul any reluctant reader. Let him only take enough by way of extract to understand how thoroughly one vein of fiery faith runs through all the prophetic books, and one passionate form of doctrine is enforced and beaten in upon the disciple again and again; not hitherto with much material effect.

Then the wrath of Eintrah, the most fiery of the spirits who are children of Time, having entered by lot into Satan, who was of the Elect from the first, "seeming a brother, being a tyrant, even thinking himself a brother while he is murdering the just," "with incomparable mildness," believing "that he had not oppressed"—a symbolic point much insisted on—

This is the Satan of Blake, sufficiently unlike the Miltonic. Of himself he cannot conceive evil and bring forth destruction; the absolute Spirit of Evil is alien