At Messrs. Sotheby’s sale of the Crewe Collection of Blake’s works on March 31st of last year (1903) the price reached for a very perfect copy containing the four title-pages, was £300. The sum would have been wealth to Blake, but it is the world’s way, consecrated now by immemorial tradition, to lay its laurels of reward and appreciation only at the dead feet of its great men.

[Larger Image]

PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM
“SONGS OF INNOCENCE,” 1789

CHAPTER VIII

THE PROPHETIC BOOKS

“The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them, and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition?

“Isaiah answer’d. I saw no God nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover’d the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded and remain confirm’d; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.” These words are quoted from one of Blake’s “Memorable Fancies” in the “Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” and in some such vein as that which Blake makes Isaiah describe, did he himself commence the writing of the “Prophetic Books.” The sense of his great, though somewhat indefinite mission, came upon Blake gradually. Much of his time, even when engaged in designing, engraving and painting, was spent in thinking immense and original thoughts. They tyrannized over him, these thoughts, and instead of his guiding their sun-ward and most daring flight, they drew him along on their reckless course, sometimes bringing him to complete overthrow, as did the horses of Apollo when driven by Phaethon.