Page:William Blake (Chesterton).djvu/67

 WILLIAM BLAKE because they cannot die. In many of Blake's pictures may be found one figure quite monotonously recurrent—the figure of a monstrously muscular old man, with hair and beard like a snowstorm, but with limbs like young trees. That is Blake's root conception; the Ancient of Days; the thing which is old with all the awfulness of its past, but young with all the energies of its future.

I make no excuse for dwelling at length on this in a life of Blake; it is the most important event. It is worth while to describe this quarrel between Blake and Stothard, because it is really a symbolic quarrel, interesting to the whole world of artists and important to the whole destiny of art. It is the quarrel between the artist who is a poet and the artist who is only a painter. In many of his merely technical designs Blake was a better and bolder artist than Stothard; still, I should admit, and most people who saw the two pictures would be ready to admit, that Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrims as a mere piece of drawing and painting is better than Blake's. But this if anything only makes the whole argument more certain. It is the duel between the artist who 55