Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/329

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CRABB ROBINSON'S DIARY, ETC.
305

an instance, he referred to his turning the money-changers out of the Temple—he had no right to do that. He digressed into a condemnation of those who sit in judgement on others. 'I have never known a very bad man who had not something very good about him.'

Speaking of the Atonement in the ordinary Calvinistic sense, he said, 'It is a horrible doctrine; if another pay your debt, I do not forgive it.'

I have no account of any other call—but there is probably an omission. I took Götzenberger to see him, and he met the Masqueriers in my chambers. Masquerier was not the man to meet him. He could not humour Blake nor understand the peculiar sense in which he was to be received.[1]


1827

My journal of this year contains nothing about Blake. But in January 1828 Barron Field and myself called on Mrs. Blake. The poor old lady was more affected than I expected she would be at the sight of me. She spoke of her husband as dying like an angel. She informed me that she was going to live with Linnell as his housekeeper. And we understood that she would live with him, and he, as it were, to farm her services and take all she had. The engravings of Job were his already. Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims were hers.

  1. 'Understood' crossed out.