Page:William Blake (IA williamblake00ches).pdf/130

 when it is not unjust. You cannot find this sentiment in the pagans of antiquity, but you can find it in the pagans of the eighteenth century; you can find it in the speeches of Fox, the soliloquies of Rousseau and even in the sniggering of Gibbon. Here is an element of the eighteenth century which is derived darkly but indubitably from Christianity, and in which Blake strongly shares. Regulus has returned to be tortured and pagan Rome is saved; but Christianity thinks a little of Regulus. A man must be pitied even when he must be killed. That individual compassion provoked Blake to violent and splendid lines—

"And the slaughtered soldier's cry Runs in blood down palace walls."

The eighteenth century did not find that pity where it found its pagan liberty and its pagan law. It took this out of the very churches that it violated and from the desperate faith that it denied. This irrational individual pity is the purely Christian element in the eighteenth century. This irrational individual pity is the purely Christian element in William Blake.