WILLIAM BLAKE
thing is that the omnipresent piece of poetry is generally the one piece that is quite incomprehensible. The verse that Blake's readers can understand least seems always to be the verse that Blake likes best. I give an ordinary instance, if anything connected with Blake can be called ordinary.
The harmless Hayley, who was a fool, but a gentleman and a poet (a country gentleman and a very minor poet), provoked Blake's indignation by giving him commissions for miniatures when he wanted to do something else, probably frescoes as big as the house. Blake wrote the epigram—
"If Hayley knows the thing you cannot do,
That is the very thing he'll set you to."
And then, feeling that there was a lack of colour and warmth in the portrait, he lightly added, for no reason in particular, the lines—
"And when he could not act upon my wife,
Hired a villain to bereave my life."
There is, apparently, no trace here of any allusion to fact. Hayley never tried to bereave anybody's life. He lacked even the adequate
85
