Page:William Blake (IA williamblake00ches).pdf/58

 plagiarist of Blake might steal a sentence and turn it into twenty volumes. It was profitable to steal an epigram from Blake for three reasons—first, that the original phrase was small and would not leave a large gap; second, that it was cosmic and synthetic and could be applied to things in general; third, that it was unintelligible and no one would know it again. I could give innumerable instances of what I mean; I will let one instance stand for the rest. In the middle of that long poem which is so disconnected that it may reasonably be doubted whether it is a long poem at all (I mean that commonly bearing the title "The Auguries of Innocence"), he introduces these two lines:

"When gold and gems adorn the plough To peaceful arts shall envy bow."

A careless and honest man would read these lines and make nothing of them. A careful thief might make out of them a whole entertaining and symbolic romance, like "Gulliver's Travels" or "Erywhon." The idea obviously is this;—that we still for some reason admit the tools of destruction to be nobler than the tools