With respect to Blake's character as exhibited in his life, it is difficult, treating him as a sane man, to understand the estimate formed of him by his admirers. There is too much puerile violence and loud self-complacency, too much aggravating childishness and wilful eccentricity, not to offend and even disgust. But treat him as a man of unbalanced brain, and these variations are the very things we should expect, and the hypothesis at once clears the ground.
Both Mr. Rossetti and Mr. Gilchrist have been at pains to prove that Blake was not mad. Perhaps he was not, as they would define madness; but when we find gravely alleged as testimony the fact that his intimate friends did not think him mad, and, on the other hand, the Examiner, or some popular journal of the day, speaking of Blake's little exhibition of pictures "as the production of an unfortunate lunatic who owes his freedom from restraint solely to his personal inoffensiveness"—we know what view we are compelled to take. If Blake was not a madman, he was a fraudulent impostor. Perhaps Hamlet was not mad; perhaps Cowper was not mad. No doubt madness is a divine attribute, and our madmen are our only sane thinkers; but the use of such a term is only a question of majorities, and it is ill to tinker with definitions. A man who saw God Almighty for the first time when he was four years old—"you know, my dear, he put his face to the window and set you screaming," as good Mrs. Blake said; a tree filled with bright angels near Islington at the age of ten; and a ghost in Hercules Buildings at Lambeth, "scaly, speckled, very awful," stalking downstairs, is not as other men. He may have been a philosopher, a poet, an angel; but the world has a right to call such men mad, and will do so to the end of the chapter. Mr. Gilchrist says, in the Dictionary of National Biography: "As a boy, he perhaps believed these were supernatural visions: as a man, it must be gathered from his explicit utterances that he understood their true nature as mental creations." And again: "Blake was wont to say to his friends respecting these 'visions,' 'You can see what I do if you choose. Work up imagination to the state of vision, and the thing is done.'"
Putting aside Blake's visions for a moment, I would be content to rest my case on the following letter:
Letter to Flaxman, written from Felpham.
"DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,
"We are safe arrived at our cottage, which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It is a perfect model for cottages, and, I think, for palaces of magnificence—only enlarging, not altering its proportions, and adding ornaments and not principles. Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple without intricacy, it seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to the wants of man. No other-formed house can ever please me so well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be improved either in beauty or use.... Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace.... And now begins a new life because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life; and these works are the delight and study of archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality? The Lord, our Father, will do for us and with us according to his divine will for our good.
"You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel—my friend and companion from eternity. In the divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence and behold our ancient days, before the earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other.
"Farewell, my best friend. Remember me and my wife in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me for ever to remain your grateful and affectionate
"WILLIAM BLAKE.
"Felpham,
"Sept. 21, 1800, Sunday morning."