was applauded for refusing—he struggled with the Angels and was victor. His wife joined in the conversation. . . .
8th. . . . Then took tea with Basil Montague, Mrs. M. there. A short chat about Coleridge, Irving, etc. She admires Blake—Encore une excellence là, de plus. . . .
February
18th. Jos. Wedd breakfasted with me. Then called on Blake. An amusing chat with him, but still no novelty. The same round of extravagant and mad doctrines, which I shall not now repeat, but merely notice their application.
He gave me, copied out by himself, Wordsworth's preface to his Excursion. At the end he has added this note:—
'Solomon, when he married Pharaoh's daughter, became a convert to the Heathen Mythology, talked exactly in this way of Jehovah as a very inferior object of man's contemplations; he also passed him by unalarmed, and was permitted. Jehovah dropped a tear and followed him by his Spirit into the abstract void. It is called the divine Mercy. Satan dwells in it, but mercy does not dwell in him.'
Of Wordsworth he talked as before. Some of his writings proceed from the Holy Ghost, but then others are the work of the Devil. However, I
