WILLIAM BLAKE
who was forced to be almost blackguardly. In other words, Blake was not mad; for such part of him as was mad was not Blake. It was an alien influence, and in a sense even an accidental one; in an extreme sense it might even be called antagonist. Properly to appreciate what this influence was, we must see the man's artistic character as a whole and notice what are its biggest forces and its biggest defects when taken in the bulk—in the whole mass of his poetry, his pictures, his criticism and his conversation. Blake's position can be summed up as a sufficiently simple problem. Blake could do so many things. Why is it that he could do none of them quite right?
Blake was not a frail or fairy-like sort of person; he had not the light unity, the capering completeness of the entirely irresponsible man. He had not the independence, one might almost say the omnipotence, that comes from being hopelessly weak. There was nothing in him of Mr Skimpole; he was not a puff of silver thistledown. He was not a reed shaken in the wind in Jordan. He was rather an oak rooted in England, but an oak half killed by the ivy. The interesting
80
