To pity oneself or another for the troubles that come through slackness is effeminacy. The true virtue here is to damn. Hence the right place for a man clothed from head to foot in hypocritic graces is hell, his right name is Satan.
But when a man has stripped himself of his virtues, and annihilating himself goes down with Christ into death, then he rises again into newness of life and vision, and the graces of the new life, still called by their old names, but now in their right places, are flaming, beautiful, irresistible.
Once Blake saw his man in his setting in eternity, he escaped from his initial resentment, and he could write calmly to Hayley and subscribe himself, “Your devoted Will Blake.”
I may remark that Blake did not think he had invented new values, like Nietzsche, in his indictment of the virtues. His language was his own, but his conclusions were precisely the same as those of Wesley, Whitefield, Bunyan, St Paul, when they, in effect, speak of man’s righteousness as filthy rags, and of his need to be clothed with the living righteousness of Christ before his garment can be reckoned beautiful and clean.
A few quotations from Milton may be given as Blake’s final word on Hayley. I will write Hayley for Satan, and Blake for Palamabron.
“Blake, reddening like the Moon in an eclipse,
Spoke, saying, You know Hayley’s mildness and his self-imposition;
Seeming a brother, being a tyrant, even thinking himself a brother
While he is murdering the just.”
“How should Hayley know the duties of another?”
“Hayley wept,
And mildly cursing Blake, him accused of crimes himself had wrought.”
“So Los said: Henceforth, Blake, let each his own station
Keep; nor in pity false, nor in officious brotherhood, where
None needs be active.”
“But Hayley, returning to his Mills (for Blake had served
The Mills of Hayley as the easier task), found all confusion,
And back returned to Los, not filled with vengeance, but with tears.
Himself convinced of Blake’s turpitude.”
“Blake prayed:
O God protect me from my friends.”
“For Hayley, flaming with Rintrah’s fury hidden beneath his own mildness,
Accused Blake before the Assembly of ingratitude and malice.”
“When Hayley, making to himself Laws from his own identity,
Compelled others to serve him in moral gratitude and submission.”
“Leutha said: ‘Entering the doors of Hayley’s brain night after night,
Like sweet perfumes, I stupefied the masculine perceptions,
And kept only the feminine awake; hence rose his soft
Delusory love to Blake.’”
“The Gnomes cursed
Hayley bitterly,
To do unkind thinks in kindness, with power armed; to say
The most irritating things in the midst of tears and love—
These are the stings of the Serpent!”
These are enough to show Blake’s method, and his remorseless understanding of Hayley. There is present an irresistible touch of humour which preserves them from being too bitter.
For the rest, the poem narrates Milton’s encounter with Urizen; his going down into self-annihilation and death; his judgment, and final redemption as he ascends to the heaven of the imagination. Milton’s heaven is then the heaven of Jesus, and his hell remains its irreconcilable contrary.
In this poem Blake’s full-grown mythology appears. The mythical persons, places, states are ominously present; but since they appear with much more particularity in The Four Zoas and Jerusalem, I may pass to them to extract what is necessary for understanding the mature Blake.
Jerusalem and The Four Zoas should be studied together. The latter was begun about 1795, and rewritten at Felpham. The early prophetic books—Urizen, Los—stand as preliminary sketches to this large poem. They are woven into it with scarcely a change of word.