Page:William Blake (IA williamblake00ches).pdf/203

 So much of what we have meant by exaggeration is really diminution; so much of what we have meant by fancy is simply falling short of fact. The Burne-Jones' man is interesting because he is not quite brave enough to be a man. The Beardsley woman is interesting because she is not quite pretty enough to be a woman. But Blake's men are brave beyond all decency: and Blake's women are so swaggeringly bent on being beautiful that they become quite ugly in the process. If anyone wishes to know exactly what I mean, I recommend him to look at one of those extraordinary designs of nymphs in which a woman (or, as Blake loved to call it, the Female Form) is made to perform an impossible feat of acrobatics. It is impossible, but it is quite female; perhaps the words are not wholly inconsistent. A living serpent might perform such a piece of athletics; but even then only a female living serpent. But nobody would ask a Burne-Jones or Beardsley female to perform any athletics at all.

Blake in pictorial art was not a mere master of the moonstruck or the grotesque. On the contrary, he was, as artists go, exceptionally a