DIARY ACCOUNT OF BLAKE
17th Decr. For the sake of connection I will here insert a minute of a short call I this morning made on Blake. He dwells in Fountain Court in the Strand. I found him in a small room which seems to be both a working room & a bed-room. Nothing could exceed the squalid air both of the apartment & his dress, but in spight of dirt, I might say filth, an air of natural gentility is diffused over him[,] & his wife, notwithstanding the same offensive character of her dress & appearance, has a good expression of countenance. So that I shall have a pleasure in calling on & conversing with these worthy people. But I fear I shall not make any progress in ascertaining his opinions & feelings. That there being really no system or connection in his mind, all his future conversation will be but varieties of wildness & incongruity. I found [him] at work on Dante. The book (Cary) & his sketches both before him. He shewed me his designs, of which I have nothing to say but that they evince a power of grouping & of throwing grace & interest over conceptions most monstrous & disgusting, which I shd. not have anticipated.
Our conversation began abt Dante. 'He was an Atheist, a mere politician busied abt this world as Milton was, till in his old age he returned back to God whom he had had in his childhood.'
I tried to get out from B[lake] that he meant this charge only in a higher sense And not using the word Atheism in its popular meaning. But he would not allow this. Tho' when he in like manner charged Locke with Atheism & I remarked that L[ocke] wrote on the evidences of Xnity & lived a virtuous life, he had nothg. to reply to me nor reiterated the charge of wilful deception. I admitted that Locke's doctrine leads to Atheism[1] & this seemed to satisfy him. From this subject we passed over to that of good &
- ↑ [Reminiscences, 1825, add:] "of the French school."
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