my spiritual life while he seems the enemy of my corporeal, though not vice versa.
What is very pleasant, every one who hears of my going to London again applauds it as the only course for the interest of all concerned in my works; observing that I ought not to be away from the opportunities London affords of seeing fine pictures, and the various improvements in works of art going on in London.
But none can know the spiritual acts of my three years' slumber on the banks of ocean, unless he has seen them in the spirit, or unless he should read my long poem[1] descriptive of those acts; for I have in these years composed an immense number of verses on one grand theme, similar to Homer's Iliad or Milton's Paradise Lost the persons and machinery entirely new to the inhabitants of earth (some of the persons excepted). I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without
- ↑ The Milton (dated 1804, but not given to the world until about 1808) deals especially with the acts at Felpham: cp. Public Address (Gilchrist, 1880, vol. ii. p. 175), "The manner in which I have rooted out the nest of villains will be seen in a poem concerning my three years' herculean labours at Felpham, which I shall soon publish"—(he is speaking of the attack made upon him in The Examiner), From the title-page we learn that Blake's original intention was to publish twelve books of this poem. Two only, however, were engraved; and a good deal of the material seems to have been transferred to Jerusalem. The latter is also dated 1804, but seems not to have been ready for publication until about 1818 (see note 1, p. 223).
