He can afford. Flatter his wife : pity his children; till we can Reduce all to our will, as spaniels are taught with art.'
For the context see Ellis and Yeats (iii. 70, 71), where, however, this passage is printed with such extraordinary inaccuracy as to suggest that the whole poem has been practically rewritten by Mr, Ellis.}}
From
MILTON
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And did those feet in ancient time1 And did the Countenance Divine5 |
Milton, f. 2. These lines occur as part of the 'Preface' following the prose passage: 'The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid, of Plato & Cicero, which all Men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible, but when the New Age is at leisure to Pronounce, all will be set right, & those Grand Works of the more ancient & consciously & professedly Inspired Men will hold their proper rank, & the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration. Shakspeare & Milton were both curb'd by the general malady & infection from the silly Greek & Latin slaves of the Sword. Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings. For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I call, Sculptors! Architects! Suffer not the fash[i]onable Fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such work: believe Christ & his Apostles that there is a Class of Men whose whole delight is in Destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity- in which we shall live for ever, in Jesus our Lord.'
2. upon] over Swinb. mountains] mountain Gil., WMR, WBY. 8 Mills] hills Gil. In Blake's mythological world the mills of Satan are situated eastward of Golgonooza (or Law), on the strand of a lake 'not of waters but of spaces, Perturbed black and deadly,' which is formed of the 'tears and sighs and death-sweat of the victims of Urizen's laws.' Beside them is rooted the tree of Mystery. All these, in different aspects, symbolize Blake's conception of natural religion. See Four Zoas, Night viii, and the Prophetic Books, passim.
