Page:William Blake (IA williamblake00ches).pdf/25

 and interesting in the fixed psychology of his youth. He came out into the world a mystic in this very practical sense, that he came out to teach rather than to learn. Even as a boy he was bursting with occult information. And all through his life he had the deficiencies of one who is always giving out and has no time to take in. He was deaf with his own cataract of speech. Hence it followed that he was devoid of patience while he was by no means devoid of charity: but impatience produced every evil effect that could practically have come from uncharitableness: impatience tripped him up and sent him sprawling twenty times in his life. The result was the unlucky paradox, that he who was always preaching perfect forgiveness seemed not to forgive even imperfectly the feeblest slights. He himself wrote in a strong epigram—

"To forgive enemies Hayley does pretend, Who never in his life forgave a friend."

But the effect of the epigram is a little lost through its considerable truth if applied to the epigrammatist. The wretched Hayley had himself been a friend to Blake—and Blake