Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/267

 Rh wife said of him that she never saw his hands still unless he was reading or asleep. He was gentle and sudden; his whole nature was in a steady heat which could blaze at any moment into a flame. 'A saint amongst the infidels and a heretic with the orthodox,' he has been described by one who knew him best in his later years, John Linnell; and Palmer has said of him: 'His love of art was so great that he would see nothing but art in anything he loved; and so, as he loved the Apostles and their divine Head (for so I believe he did), he must needs say that they were all artists.' 'When opposed by the superstitious, the crafty, or the proud,' says Linnell again, 'he outraged all common-sense and rationality by the opinions he advanced'; and Palmer gives an instance of it: 'Being irritated by the exclusively scientific talk at a friend's house, which talk had turned on the vastness of space, he cried out, "It is false. I walked the other evening to the end of the heath, and touched the sky with my finger."'

It was of the essence of Blake's sanity that he could always touch the sky with his finger. 'To justify the soul's frequent joy