Page:Works Of William Blake Volume 1.pdf/4

viii "understanding" or the “intellect," is based on a line of Blake’s own.

Two principal causes have hitherto kept the critics, — among whom must be included Mr. Swinburne himself, though he reigns as the one-eyed man of the proverb among the blind, — from attaining a knowledge of what Blake meant.

The first is the solidity of the myth, and its wonderful coherence. The second is the variety of terms in which the sections of it are named.

The foundation of Blake’s symbolic system of speech is his conception of the Four-fold in Man, and the covering that concealed this system was a peculiar use of synonyms. The four portions of Humanity are divided under the names of the Four Zoas in the myth, and the reader who does not under­stand the relation of the Four Zoas to each other, and to each living man, has not made even the first step towards under­standing the Symbolic System which is the signature of Blake’s genius, and the guarantee of his sanity. Mr. Swin­burne, Mr. Gilchrist, and the brothers, Dante and William Rossetti, deserve well of literature for having brought Blake into the light of day and made his name known throughout the length and breadth of England. But though whatever is accessible to us now was accessible to them when they wrote, including the then unpublished "Vala," not one chapter, not one clear paragraph about the myth of Four Zoas, is to be found in all that they have published.

With regard to the use of synonyms, which must be under­stood before the Four Zoas can be traced through their different disguises, the earliest idea of this, as a mere guess,