Page:William Blake (Chesterton).djvu/95

 WILLIAM BLAKE question of spiritual botany is—What was the ivy that half killed him? Originally his intellect was not only strong but strongly rational—one might almost say strongly sceptical. There never was a man of whom it was less true to say (as has been said) that he was a light sensitive lyrist, a mere piper of pretty songs for children. His mind was like a ruined Roman arch; it has been broken by barbarians; but what there is of it is Roman. So it was with William Blake's reason; it had been broken (or cracked) by something; but what there was of it was reasonable. In his art criticism he never said anything that was not strictly consistent with his first principles. In his controversies, in the many matters in which he argued angrily or venomously, he never lost the thread of the argument. Like every great mystic he was also a great rationalist. Read Blake's attack upon Stothard's picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims, and you will see that he could not only write a quite sensible piece of criticism, but even a quite slashing piece of journalism. By nature one almost feels that he might have done anything; have conducted campaigns like Napoleon or 83