Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/175

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
WILLIAM BLAKE
151

one man who was fourfold. He was self-divided, and his real humanity slain on the stems of generation, and the form of the fourth was like the Son of God. How he became divided is a subject of great sublimity and pathos. The Artist has written it, under inspiration, and will, if God please, publish it. It is voluminous, and contains the ancient history of Britain, and the world of Satan and Adam.' 'All these things,' he has just said, 'are written in Eden.' And he says further: 'The British Antiquities are now in the Artist's hands; all his visionary contemplations relating to his own country and its ancient glory, when it was, as it again shall be, the source of learning and inspiration.' 'Adam was a Druid, and Noah.' In the description of his picture of the 'Last Judgment' Blake indicates 'Albion, our ancestor, patriarch of the Atlantic Continent, whose history preceded that of the Hebrews, and in whose sleep, or chaos, creation began. The good woman is Britannia, the wife of Albion. Jerusalem is their daughter.'

We see here the symbols, partly Jewish and partly British, into which Blake had