REMINISCENCES OF BLAKE
wrote "I do not know who wrote these Prefaces: they are very mischievous & direct contrary to W.'s own practice" (p. 341). This is not the defence of his own style in opposition to what is called Poetic Diction, but a sort of historic vindication of the unpopular poets. On Macpherson, p. 364. W. wrote with the severity with wh. all great writers have written of him. Blake's comment below was:—"I believe both Macpherson & Chatterton, that what they say is ancient is so." & in the following page: "I own myself an admirer of Ossian equally with any other poet whatever, Rowley & Chatterton also." And at the end of this Essay he wrote "It appears to me as if the last paragraph beginning "Is it the result of the whole" & it [?] was written by another hand & mind from the rest of these Prefaces: they are the opinions of [blank in MS.] landscape painter. Imagination is the divine vision not of the World, nor of Man, nor from Man as he is a natural man, but only as he is a spiritual Man. Imagination has nothing to do with Memory."1.3.52.
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In the No: of the Gents. Magazine for last Jan. [1852] there is a letter by Cromek to Blake, printed in order to convict B[lake] of selfishness. It cannot possibly be substantially true. I may elsewhere notice it.
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It was, I believe on the 7th of December that I saw him last I had just heard of the death of Flaxman, a man whom he professed to admire, & was curious how he wd. receive the intelligence. It was as I expected. He had been ill during the summer, & he said with a smile, 'I thought I shd. have gone first.' He then said, 'I cannot think of death as more than the going out of one room into another.' And Flaxman was no longer thought of. He relapsed into his ordinary train of thinking. Indeed I had by this time learned that there was nothing to be gained
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