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 WILLIAM BLAKE sane enough; he might be as sane as he was stupid. If Blake had always written badly he might be sane. But a man who could write so well and did write so badly must be mad.

What was it that was eating away a part of Blake's brain? I venture to offer an answer which in the eyes of many people will have nothing to recommend it except the accident of its personal sincerity. I firmly believe that what did hurt Blake's brain was the reality of his spiritual communications. In the case of all poets, and especially in the case of Blake, the phrase "an inspired poet" commonly means a good poet. About Blake it is specially instinctive. And about Blake, I am quite convinced, it is specially untrue. His inspired poems were not his good poems. His inspired poems were very often his particularly bad ones; they were bad by inspiration. If a ploughman says that he saw a ghost, it is not quite sufficient to answer merely that he is a madman. It may have been seeing the ghost that drove him mad. His lunacy may not prove the falsehood of his tale, but rather its terrible truth. So in the same way I differ 93