“ Wordsworth & Lamb like his poems & the Aders his paintings.
A few other detached thoughts occur to me.
Bacon, Locke & Newton are the three great teachers of Atheism & of Satan's doctrine.
Everything is Atheism which assumes the reality of the Natural & Unspiritual world.
Irving He is a highly gifted man. He is a sent man, but they who are sent sometimes go further than they ought.
Dante saw Devils where I see none. I see only good. ”

“ The language of the Bible on that subject is only poetical or allegorical. Yet soon after he denied that the natural world is anything. It is all nothing & Satan's empire is the empire of nothing. He reverted soon to his favourite expression 'my visions.' I saw Milton in Imagination And he told me to beware of being misled by his Paradise Lost In particular he wished me to shew the falsehood of his doctrine that the pleasures of sex arose from the fall. The fall could not produce any pleasure. I answered the fall produced a state of evil in which there was a mixture of good or pleasure. ”

“ Blake which are delightful & when he is not referring to his Visions he talks sensibly & acutely. His friend Linnel seems a great admirer. Perhaps the best thing he said was his comparison of moral with natural evil. Who shall say what God thinks evil. That is a wise tale of the Mahometans Of the Angel of the Lord that murdered the infant (alluding to the Hermit of Parnell, I suppose) . Is not every infant that dies of disease in effect murdered by an angel? 17th Decr. For the sake of connection I will here insert a minute of a short call I this morning made on Blake. ”

“ Sometimes a very old man—he spoke of M [ilton] as being at one time a sort of classical Atheist, And of Dante as being now with God. Of the faculty of Vision he spoke as One he has had from early infancy. He thinks all men partake of it, but it is lost by not being cultivated And he eagerly assented to a remark I made that All men have all Acuities to a greater or less degree.—I am to renew my visits & to read Wordsworth to him of Whom he seems to entertain a high idea.
17th. Made a visit to Blake of which I have written fully in a preceding page. ”

“ The spirit said to him 'Blake, be an artist & nothing else. In this there is felicity"—His eye glistend while he spoke of devoting himself solely to divine art. Art is inspiration, When Michael Angelo or Raphael or Mr. Flaxman does any of his fine things, he does them in the spirit. Bl. said 'I shd. be sorry if I had any earthly fame for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. ”

“ As B [lake] mentioned Swedenb [org] & Dante together, I wished to know whether he considered their visions of the same kind. As far as I cd. collect he does. Dante he said was the greater poet. He had political objects. Yet this, tho' wrong, does not appear in Blake's mind to affect the truth of the vision. Strangely inconsistent with this was the language of Bl [ake] about Wordsworth. W [ordsworth] he thinks is no Xn. but a Platonist—he askd me—Does he believe in the Scriptures. ”

“ A call on Blake. My 3d, Interview. I read him Wordsworth's incomparable Ode which he heartily enjoyed. The same half crazy crotchets abt. the two worlds, the eternal repetition of which must in time become tiresome. Again he repeated today 'I fear Wordsworth loves Nature & Nature is the work of the Devil. The Devil is in us, as far as we are Nature. On my enquiring whether the Devil wd. not be destroyed by God, as being of less power, he denied that God has any power—Asserted that the Devil is eternally created not by God but by God's permission. ”

“ And in that sense the fall may be said to produce the pleasure. But he replied that the fall produced only generation & death. And then he went off upon a rambling state [-ment?] of a Union of sexes in Man as in God, an Androgynous state in which I could not follow him—As he spoke of Milton's appearing to him, I asked whether he resembled the prints of him. ”

“ Our conversation began abt Dante. 'He was an Atheist, a mere politician busied abt this world as Milton was, till in his old age he returned back to God whom he had had in his childhood.'
I tried to get out from B [lake] that he meant this charge only in a higher sense And not using the word Atheism in its popular meaning. But he would not allow this. Tho' when he in like manner charged Locke with Atheism & I remarked that L [ocke] wrote on the evidences of Xnity & lived a virtuous life, he had nothg. ”

“ Sharp, tho' deceived by Brothers, became a warm partisan of Joanna Southcott. He endeavoured to make a convert of Blake the engraver, but as Fl. judiciously observed, such men as B [lake] are not fond of playing the 2d. fiddle. Hence B [lake] himself a seer of visions & a dreamer of dreams would not do homage to a rival claimant of the privilege of prophecy. B [lake] told F [laxman] that he had had a violent dispute with the Angels on some subject and had driven them away. . . . Excessive pride equally denoted Blake & Barry [another seer of visions] .
IV. 1825. Dec 10. Dined with Aders. ”