Page:William Blake (IA williamblake00ches).pdf/201

 female" because they really thought, with their whole souls, that a female ought to be elegant. The old rebels preserved the old fashions—and among others the old fashion of rebelling. The new rebels, the revolutionists of our time, are intent upon introducing new fashions in boots, beds, food or furniture; so they have no time to rebel. But if we have once grasped this eighteenth century element of the insistence upon the elegant female because she is elegant, we have got hold of a fundamental fact in the relation of that century to Blake.

It is instinctive to describe Blake as a fantastic artist; and yet there is a very real sense in which Blake is conventional. If any reader thinks the phrase paradoxical, he can easily discover that it is true; he can discover it simply by comparing Blake even in his most wild and arbitrary work with any merely modern artist who has the name of being wild; with Aubrey Beardsley or even with Rossetti. All Blake's heroes are conventional heroes made unconventionally heroic. All Blake's heroines are elegant females without their clothes. But in both cases they ex