Page:William Blake (Chesterton).djvu/47

WILLIAM BLAKE say vital) with him as any of the sights of the country. The black chimney-sweep is as obvious as the white lamb. What is worse still, the white lamb of England is no more natural or native than the alien golden lion of Africa. He was, in fact, a Cockney, like Keats; and Cockneys as a class tend to have too poetical and luxuriantly imaginative a view of life. Blake was about as little affected by environment as any man that ever lived in this world. Still he did change his environment, and it did change him.

There lived about this time near the little village of Eartham, in Sussex, a simple, kind-hearted but somewhat consequential squire of the name of Hayley. He was a landlord and an aristocrat; but he was not one of those whose vanity can be wholly fulfilled by such functions. He considered himself a patron of poetry; and indeed he was one; but, alas! he had a yet more alarming idea. He also considered himself a poet. Whether any one agreed with that opinion while he still ruled the estates and hunted the country it is difficult now to discover. It is sufficiently certain that nobody agrees with it now. "The Triumphs of 35