James Thomson

“ There is also a third kind of madness, of those who are possessed by the Muses ; which enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers, with these adorning the myriad actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. But he who, having no touch of the Muses' mad- ness in his soul, and comes to the door, and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art — he, I say, and his poetry, are not admitted ; the sane man is nowhere at all, when he enters into the rivalry with madmen. ”

“ A solemn lay comes slowly, It peals from earth to heaven, Grand is the strain and holy, That now to thee is given. Thou art a bride of spirit, A sister of our skies, The house thou shall inherit Four square before thee lies. ”

“ To be the tomb of death and oblivion, not the home of life and remembrance ; to be the silent and solitary sepulchre of its royal rearer, wherein he shall lie deep hidden, thick-swathed, made mummy, prisoned in the heavy sarcophagus, which for him is also a psychophagus : a desolate pyramid slowly crumbling away in the desolate desert, the sternest mockery of a monument, an enormous heap of blocks so enormous that it will not even repay quarrying for materials for homely structures of living use ”

“ If, as he so forcibly lays down, we must do all that industry can do to prepare the human materials for the operation of the Spirit, say the altar and the fuel and the incense for the kindling by the spark from heaven, why should our co-operation cease with the first kindling ? why should we not still give all our powers to the fanning of the spark into broad clear flame? ”

“ But perhaps the strangest thing to note in such truly devout and wise men as Swedenborg and Wilkinson, who so bitterly denounce and ruthlessly punish lack of faith in others, however splendid their genius, however beneficent their lives, and who so ardently proclaim their own faith in ever-flowing, all- vivifying Divine Influx through every world and order of the Universe, is their utter want of faith in be- lieving that their God's last word is locked up in a series of obscure and incongruous pamphlets, written no one knows when or by whom, coherent solely by aid of the bookbinder ”

“ Indeed, a bird does not more readily weave its nest, or a mole bore into the ground, than this seer of souls substructs a new hell and pit, each more abominable than the last, round every new crew of offenders. ”

“ The spirit, strong in love to thee and thine. Commits these verses to a brother's hand. They come to earth : mixed with her bitter wine, They glow with sparklings from the heavenly strand." We are here in the heart's holy of holies, the in- most sanctuary of love and sorrow, "sorrow more beautiful than beauty's self;" ”

“ Of the worst aspect of Blake's genius it is painful to speak. In his 'Prophecies of America,' his 'Visions of the Daughters of Albion,' and a host of unpublished drawings [the "Prophetic Books" have words as well as designs] , earth-born might has banished the heavenlier elements of Art, and exists combined with all that is monstrous and diabolical. In the domain of Terror he here entered, the characteristic of his genius is fearful Reality. He embodies no Byronisms—none of the sentimentalities of civilised vice—but delights to draw evil things and evil beings in their naked and final state. ”

“ Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration ; the mirrors of gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present ; the words which express what they understand not ; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire ; the influence which is moved not, but moves. ”

“ On the contrary, copying the outward form of the past, he has delivered to us a multitude of new hieroglyphics, which contain no presumable reconditeness of meaning, and which we are obliged to account for, simply by the artist's having yielded himself up, more thoroughly than other men will do, to those fantastic impulses which are common to all mankind, and which saner men subjugate, but cannot exterminate. In so yielding himself, the Artist, not less than the man, was a loser, though it unquestionably gave him a certain power, as all unscrupulous passion must, of wildness and fierce vagary. ”

“ And, moreover, can we help being angry, do we not well to be angry when, our poor race pining for illumination, some of the most fulgent spirits obstinately refuse to be effulgent ; will not let their light shine forth before men, but carefully hide it under a bushel ? The supreme warmth and light of genius and intellect are so rare, so sorely needed, yet so unaccountably wasted ! I mean not in such instances as those of Swedenborg and Comte, where the long chronic monomania of the decadence followed an acute attack of mental disease in the prime ”

“ Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, I will compose poetry ! The greatest poet even cannot say it, for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some in- visible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness ; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the con- scious portions of our natures are unprophetic, either of its approach or its departure. ”

“ I think of a Maurice scourging himself with those "forty stripes save one," the Thirty -nine Articles, and burying his genius in the deathly vaults of the mouldering English Church ; of a Newman dis- membering himself of intellect and will, and perishing in the labyrinths of the Roman Catacombs ; of a Wilkinson immolating his splendid powers on the altar built of dead men's bones, of a demented dogma- tism more implacable than the old heathen altars of merely bodily human sacrifice. ”

“ Sleep is a field, most level : Softness doth roam and revel In wind with velvet finger Over its grass, where linger Down of all birds of heaven Stillness of dawn and even. And level 'tis, because In its most smoothest pause, 'Tis canvass for intention Of heaven's most kind invention : For dreams more sweet than life Bears in day's coarser strife. ”

“ Of all modern men, the engraver's apprentice [Blake] was to grow up the likest to Emanuel Swedenborg; already by constitutional endowment and temperament was so; in faculty for theosophic dreaming, for the seeing of visions while broad awake, and in matter-of-fact hold of spiritual things. To savan and to artist alike, while yet on earth, the heavens were opened. By Swedenborg's theological writings, the first English editions of which appeared during Blake's manhood, the latter was considerably influenced, but in no slavish spirit. ”

“ And the beauty of their dream, As upon their bench they seem, Is old justice, fat and flavoured, Carved for them, and by them savoured. Lo I the logic skeletons Serve them for their meat with stones, And for reasonings they try How the logic-stones will fry. ”

“ The faults are equally conspicuous, and he who runs may read them. They amount to an utter want of elaboration, and even, in many cases, to an inattention to the ordinary rules of grammar. Yet the 'Songs of Innocence,' at least, are quite free from the dark becloudment which rolled and billowed over Blake in his later days. He here transcended Self, and escaped from the isolation which Self involves; and, as it then ever is, his expanding affections embraced universal man, and, without violating, beautified and hallowed even his individual peculiarities. ”

“ Descended into the world of flesh, the spirit is so far subject to worldly conditions that its work can be furthered or hindered, its manifestation be made more or less clear, by the human being through which it works and shines.* Abdicating voluntarily his crown of humanity. Dr. Wilkinson reduces himself to a mere registering machine, with no overseer to keep it in order ; to a mere dead channel for the waters of life, with no one to clear away impediments and impurities ”

“ East, West, North, South, none is refused The last good gold of heaven. A STRANGE BOOK 369 And so when death gives gold of good, From his dear bed away, More hearts than those around that stood, Feel light from death's new day. ”

“ The beauty, chasteness, and clear polish of Shelley's mind, as well as his metaphysical irreligion, took him, naturally enough, to the philosophy and theology of the Greeks, where he could at once enjoy the loose dogma of an Impersonal Creator, and have liberty to distribute Personality at will to the beautiful unliving forms of the visible creation. ”

“ And molehills of old care Have on its lawn no share. But loving virtue's roller Is of that ground controller ; And conscience plucketh weeds When first they leave their seeds : Religion soweth grass Brighter than ever was. ”

“ Human nature quails before such tremendous moralities. ... A new phase appears in the final state ; the memory of the skies is lost ; baseness accepts its lot, and falsehood becomes self-evident ; wasting ensues to compressed limb and faculty, and the evil spirit descends to his mineral estate, a living atom of the second death. ”

“ They are remarkable for the transparent depth of thought which constitutes true simplicity—they give us glimpses of all that is holiest in the childhood of the world and the individual—they abound with the sweetest touches of that pastoral life, by which the Golden Age may be still visibly represented to the Iron one—they delineate full-orbed age, ripe with the seeds of a second infancy, which is 'the Kingdom of Heaven.' The latter half of the volume, comprising the 'Songs of Experience,' consists, it is true, of darker themes ”

“ For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired, and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him ; when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless, and is unable to utter his oracles. ”

“ With vizor down doth ride. This is the horse of flesh ; Its hoof is in a mesh Of swampy wants and wishes : It hath the tail of fishes : * Cold in reality ; Hot in mere fantasy : It dreams of heavens of singing : But hell is in it springing. Now then choose well the choir That hath the numerous lyre ; The song with fellows mated, By others' songs completed : And let the horse of flesh Be lifted from the mesh ; For heaven is melody, And is society. ”

“ In this case, the doctors are the poets and mystics; the laymen, we common prosy readers. Rossetti discovers affinity, verging on identity, of Blake and Wilkinson; Wilkinson repudiates his twin-brother Blake, whom he pairs off with atheistic-pantheistic Shelley; Blake expresses the utmost contempt for Swedenborg, whom his unfraternal twin-brother idolises; Gilchrist pronounces Blake likest of all modern men to the Swedenborg he disdains; Swinburne can almost believe in transmigration of soul from Blake to Walt Whitman, the two are so wonderfully alike. ”

“ In placing reason and will in the second place, it is indispensable for man, whose highest present faculties these are, to be well assured what is put in the first place. Hence, writing from an Influx which is really out of your self, or so far within your self, as to amount to the same thing, is either a religion or a madness. I know of no third possibilty. In allowing your faculties to be directed to ends they know not of, there is only one Being to whom you dare entrust them—only the Lord. ”

“ I can write nothing of myself, but as a child which neither knows nor understands anything, which neither has ever been learnt, but only that which the Lord vouchsafes to know in me, according to the measure as Himself manifests in me. ”

“ We must not confound a Swedenborg with a Home, a Blake with a Slade, a Wilkinson with a " Revd." Mr. Monk. When we have the good for- tune to meet in life, or history, or literature with a great and noble man, let us do our best to study and understand him and his work, however eccentric his life-orbit may be deemed by the world, however startling its aberrations may at first appear to our- selves; nor let us ever fear, rather let us ever be forward to praise, as publicly as we can, all that we find praiseworthy in the man and his work ”

“ This power is possessed, in different degrees, by every human being, if he will but give loose and free vent to the hell that is in him; and hence the madness, even of the meanest, is terrific. But no madness can long be considered either really Poetic or Artistical. ”

“ I form the light and create dark- ness : I make peace, and create evil : I the Lord do 362 CRITICAL STUDIES all these things." They love to symbolise their Lord and the Holy Spirit by the lamb and the dove, which are among the most silly and cowardly and helpless of animals ; they are dreadfully affronted if you consider the vulture, the ape, the toad equally symbolic of their God; yet nothing can be more evident than that every thing and being created (not excluding their devil) must faithfully represent or express some portion or characteristic of the Creator. ”

“ The great symbolisms and analogies, as of warmth and love, light and intelligence, and their operations and effects, are universal and obvious to all, being wide as nature, including human nature ; the petty, A STRANGE BOOK 339 stark, minutely detailed symbolisms and analogies are merely arbitrary, fanciful, ingenious, personal, and their elaboration a mere trifling and waste of precious time, like the ivory carving and puzale-boxes of the Chinese, the tattooing of savages^ — they are to the genuine and general what concetti or conceits are to real imaginative poetry. ”