angry with the world and its often unworthy favourites, or rebellious against its awards; jostled though he were, in his quiet course, by thousands of coarse, eager men, 'famous' and prosperous in their day. 'I live in a hole here,' he would say, 'but God has a beautiful mansion for me elsewhere.' 'Poor, dear man,' exclaimed one of his friends to me, 'to think how ill he was used, and yet he took it all so quietly.' Surely 'the world,' if it had a conscience to be pricked, might blush at a few of its awards. 'The public,' say some, 'may be compared to a reigning beauty, whose favour is hard to win, and who often gives it to a fool in the end.'
Blake, however, was rich in the midst of poverty. 'They pity me,' he would say of Lawrence and other prosperous artists, who condescended to visit him; 'but 'tis they are the just objects of pity: I possess my visions and peace. They have bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage.' For he felt that he could have had fame and fortune, if he had chosen; if he had not voluntarily, and with his eyes open, cleaved to the imaginative life. 'If asked,' writes Mr. Palmer, 'whether I ever knew, among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me.' And this feeling of happiness communicated itself as a serene, beneficent influence to others. His disciples would often wonder thereat, and wish they had within themselves the faculty, unhelped by him, to feel as he did.
There is a short poem in the MS, note-book which speaks eloquently on this head of unworldliness with its resultant calm, elevated joy. Let us listen to it:—
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I rose up at the dawn of day:
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