Page:William Blake (IA williamblake00ches).pdf/103

 is simply to play the fool with the words. A madman who writes this may be higher than ordinary humanity; so may any madman in Hanwell. But he is a madman in every sense that the word has among men. I have taken this ease of actual and abrupt irrelevance as the strongest form of the thing; but it has other forms almost equally decisive. For instance, Blake had a strong sense of humour, but it was not under control; it could be eclipsed and could completely disappear. There was certainly a spouting fountain of fierce laughter in the man who could write in an epigram—

"A dirty sneaking knave I knew Oh, Mr Cromek, how do you do?"

Yet the laughter was as fitful as it was fierce; and it can suddenly fail. Blake's sense of humour can sometimes completely desert him. He writes a string of verses against cruelty to the smallest creature as a sort of mystical insult to the universe. It contains such really fine couplets as these—

"Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain can tear."