Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/310

276 light and soft flashes as of starry or scaly brilliance.

The same year 1804 saw the huge advent of Jerusalem. Of that terrible "emanation," hitherto the main cornerstone of offence to all students of Blake, what can be said within any decent limit? or where shall any traveller find a rest for feet or eyes in that noisy and misty land? It were a mere frenzy of discipleship that would under- take by force of words to make straight these crooked ways or compel things incoherent to cohere. Supra hanc petram—and such a rock it is to begin any church-building upon! Many of the unwary have stumbled over it and broken their wits. Seriously, one cannot imagine that people will ever read through this vast poem with pleasure enough to warrant them in having patience with it.

Several things, true in the main of all the prophetic books, are especially true and memorable with regard to those written or designed during the "three years' slumber" at Felpham. They are the results of intense and active solitude working upon the capricious nerves and tremulous brain of a man naturally the most excitable and receptive of men. They are to be read by the light of his earlier work in the same line; still more perhaps by the light of those invaluable ten letters printed in Vol. II. of the Life, for which one can hardly give thanks enough. The incredible fever of spirit under the sting and stress of which he thought and laboured all his life through, has left marks of its hot and restless presence as clearly on this short correspondence as on the voluminous rolls of prophecy. The merit or demerit of the