Page:William Blake (IA williamblake00ches).pdf/113

 appreciate the size and mystery of the idea; and most people would form some sort of fancy of how a great poetical painter, such as Michael Angelo or Watts, would have rendered the idea; they can conceive a face swarthy and secret, or ponderous and lowering, or staring and tropical, or Appolonian and pure. Whatever was the man who built the pyramids, one feels that he must (to put it mildly) have been a clever man. We look at Blake's picture of the man, and with a start behold the face of an idiot. Nay, we behold even the face of an evil idiot, a leering, half-witted face with no chin and the protuberant nose of a pig. Blake declared that he drew this face from a real spirit, and I see no reason to doubt that he did. But if he did, it was not really the man who built the pyramids; it was not any spirit with whom a gentleman ought to wish to be on intimate terms. That vision of swinish silliness was really a bad vision to have, it left a smell of demoniac silliness behind it. I am very sure that it left Blake sillier than it found him.

In this way, rightly or wrongly, I explain the chaos and occasional weakness which perplexes