Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/148

 124 existence, and symbol, which is none of the 'daughters of Memory,' but itself vision or inspiration. He wrote in the MS. book: 'Vision or imagination is a representation of what actually exists, really and unchangeably. Fable or allegory is formed by the daughters of Memory.' And thus in the designs which accompany the text of his Prophetic Books there is rarely the mere illustration of those pages. He does not copy in line what he has said in words, or explain in words what he has rendered in line; a creation probably contemporary is going on, and words and lines render between them, the one to the eyes, the other to the mind, the same image of spiritual things, apprehended by different organs of perception.

And so in his pictures, what he gives us is not a picture after a mental idea; it is the literal delineation of an imaginative vision, of a conception of the imagination. He wrote: 'If you have not nature before you for every touch, you cannot paint portrait; and if you have nature before you at all, you cannot paint history.' There is a water-colour of Christ in the carpenter's