EXTRACTS from LETTER REFERRING to BLAKE
H.C.R. to Dorothy Wordsworth, Post Mark Feb. 1826. No. 142 in Vol. of Letters 1818–1826.
... I have above mentioned Blake. I forget whether I ever mentioned to you this very interesting man, with whom I am now become acquainted. Were the 'memorials' at my hand, I should quote a fine passage in the sonnet on the Cologne Cathedral as applicable to the contemplation of this singular being. I gave your brother some poems in M.S. by him & they interested him—as well they might, for there is an affinity between them as there is between the regulated imagination of a wise poet & the incoherent dreams of a poet. Blake is an engraver by trade—a painter & a poet also whose works have been subject of derision to men in general, but he has a few admirers & some of eminence have eulogised his designs—he has lived in obscurity & poverty, to which the constant hallucinations in which he lives have doomed him. I do not mean to give you a detailed account of him. A few words will serve to inform you of what class he is. He is not so much a disciple of Jacob Bohmen & Swedenborg as a fellow visionary. He lives as they did in a world of his own. Enjoying constant intercourse with the world of spirits, He receives visits from Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Voltaire &c &c & has given me repeatedly their very words in their conversations. His paintings are copies of what he sees in his visions. His books (& his M.S.S. are immense in quantity) are dictated from the Spirits. He told me yesterday that when he writes, it is for the spirits only.—he sees the words fly about the room the moment he has put them on paper & his book is then published. A man so favoured of course has sources of wisdom & truth peculiar to himself—I will not pretend to give you an account of his religious &
