establishment in the Old Testament manner, but gave up the project because it made Mrs. Blake cry.' 'The element of fable,' they add, 'lies in the implication that the woman who was to have wrecked this household had a bodily existence. . . . There is a possibility that he entertained mentally some polygamous project, and justified it on some patriarchal theory. A project and theory are one thing, however, and a woman is another; and though there is abundant suggestion of the project and theory, there is no evidence at all of the woman.' I have found in the unpublished part of Crabb Robinson's Diary and Reminiscences more than a 'possibility' or even 'abundant suggestion' that Blake accepted the theory as a theory. Crabb Robinson himself was so frightened by it that he had to confide it to his Diary in the disguise of German, though, when he came to compile his Reminiscences many years later he ventured to put it down in plain English which no editor has yet ventured to print. Both passages will be found in their place in the verbatim reprint given later; but I will quote the second here:
