Page:William Blake, painter and poet.djvu/48

 Experience it almost always seems to have grown out of the poem. In the less inspired Prophetical Books, on the other hand, the pictorial representation, even when present only to the artist's mind, seems to have frequently suggested or modified the text. An example may be adduced from The Book of Thel.

Blake had noted the external likeness of the convolutions of the ear to the convolutions of a whirlpool; therefore the ear shall be described as actually being what it superficially resembles, and because the whirlpool sucks in ships, the ear shall suck in creations. It must also be remembered that Blake's belief that his works were given him by inspiration prevented his revising them, and that they were stereotyped by the method of their publication. No considerable productions of the human mind, it is probable, so nearly approach the character of absolutely extemporaneous utterances.

Before passing from the literary to the artistic expression of Blake's genius in these books, something must be said of the remarkable appendix to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell entitled Proverbs of Hell. These are a number of aphoristic sayings, impregnated with Blake's peculiarities of thought and expression, but for the most part so shrewd and pithy as to demonstrate the author's sanity, at least at this time of his life. The following are some of the more striking:—

These are not the scintillations of reason which may occasionally illumine the chaos of a madman's brain, but bespeak a core of good