LETTERS OF WILLIAM BLAKE.
59
But I hope that none of my designs will be destitute of infinite particulars[1] which will present themselves to the contemplator. And though I call them mine, I know that they are not mine, being of the same opinion with Milton when he says[2] that the Muse visits his slumbers and awakes and governs his song when morn purples the east, and being also in the predicament of that prophet who says: "I cannot go beyond the command of the Lord, to speak good or bad."[3]
If you approve of my manner, and it is agreeable to you, I would rather paint pictures in oil[4] of the same dimensions than make drawings, and on the same terms. By this means you will have a number of cabinet pictures, which I flatter myself
- ↑ The importance which Blake attached to "minute particulars" will be well known to readers of the "prophetical books ": cp. Jerusalem, p. 55, 11. 60-64: "He who would do good to another, must do it in Minute Particulars, | General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, & flatterer: | For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organised Particulars, | And not in generalising Demonstrations of the Rational Power. | The Infinite alone resides in Definite & Determinate Identity"; A Vision of the Last Judgment (see Gilchrist, 1880, vol ii. p. 193): "General knowledge is remote knowledge: it is in particulars that wisdom consists"; and the Public Address (Gilchrist, 1880, vol. ii. p. 168): "Ideas cannot be given but in their minutely appropriate words, nor can a design be made without its minutely appropriate execution."
- ↑ Paradise Lost, book vii. 11. 29, 30.
- ↑ Numbers xxiv. 13.
- ↑ Blake afterwards abandoned the oily vehicle, finding a species of tempera, which he invented, more suitable to his purpose.
