Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/62

46 the hapless Hayley that he behaved well in this time of vexation and danger: coming forward to bail "our friend Blake," and working hard for the defence in a tumultuous and spluttering way: he "would appear in public at the trial, living or dying," and did, with or without leave of doctors, appear and speak up for the accused. Blake's honourable acquittal does not make it less disgraceful that the charge should at all have been entertained. His own courage, readiness of wit, and sincerity of spirit are fully shown in the letter relating this short and sharp episode in his quiet life. Some months later he returned to London once for all, and once for all broke off relations with Felpham: commending, it may be hoped, Hayley to the Muses and Scholfield to the halberts.

Having read these letters, we are not lightly to judge of Blake as of another man. Thoughts and creeds peculiar to his mind found expression in ways and words peculiar to his lips. It was no vain or empty claim that he put forward to especial insight and individual means of labour. If he spoke strangely, he had great things to speak. If he acted strangely, he had great things to do. "Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire." Let the tree be judged by its fruit. If the man who wrote thus had nothing to do or to say worth the saying or the doing, it may fairly be said that he was mad or foolish. The involving smoke, here again, implied the latent fire. Where the particles of dust are mere hardened mud, where the cloud is mere condensing fog hatched from the stagnation of a swamp, one may justly complain of the obstruction and the obscurity. There is here indeed too much of mist,