“The Strong Man represents the human sublime. The Beautiful Man represents the human pathetic, which was in the ban of Eden divided into male and female. The Ugly Man represents the human reason. They were originally one man, who was fourfold: he was self divided and his real humanity drawn on the stems of generation; and the form of the fourth was like the Son of God. How he became divided is a subject of great sublimity and pathos. The Artist has written it, under inspiration, and will if God please, publish it. It is voluminous, and contains the ancient history of Britain, and the world of Satan and of Adam.
“In the mean time he has painted this picture, which supposes that in the reign of that British Prince, who lived in the fifth century, there were remains of those naked heroes in the Welsh mountains. They are now. Gray saw them in the person of his Bard on Snowdon; there they dwell in naked simplicity; happy is he who can see and converse with them, above the shadows of generation and death. In this picture, believing with Milton the ancient British history, Mr. Blake has done as all the ancients did, and as all the moderns who are worthy of fame, given the historical fact in its poetical vigour; so as it always happens; and not in that dull way that some historians pretend, who being weakly organised themselves, cannot see either miracle or prodigy. All is to them a dull round of probabilities and possibilities; but the history of all times and places is nothing else but improbabilities and impossibilities,—what we should say was impossible, if we did not see it always before our eyes.
“The antiquities of every nation under Heaven are no less sacred than those of the Jews, they are the same thing, as Jacob Bryant and all antiquaries have proved. How other antiquities came to be neglected and disbelieved, while those of the Jews are collected and arranged is an enquiry, worthy of both the Antiquarian and the Divine. All had originally one language, and one religion, this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preached the Gospel of Jesus, the reasoning historian, turner and twister of courses and consequences, such as Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire, cannot with all their artifice, turn or twist one fact, or disarrange self evident action and reality. Reasons and opinions concerning acts are not history. Acts themselves alone are history, and they are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the acts O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. Tell me the What; I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable, or impossible. His opinion, who does not see spiritual agency, is not worth any man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is improbable, must reject all History, and retain doubts only.
“It has been said to the Artist, take the Apollo for the model of your beautiful man, and the Hercules for your strong man, and the Dancing Fawn for your ugly man. Now he comes to his trial. He knows that what he does is not inferior to the grandest antiques. Superior they cannot be, for human power cannot go beyond either what he does, or what they have done, it is the gift of God, it is inspiration and vision. He had resolved to emulate those precious remains of antiquity. He has done so, and the result you behold. His ideas of strength and beauty have not been greatly different. Poetry as it exists now on earth, in the various remains of ancient authors, Music as it exists in old tunes or melodies, Painting and Sculpture as it exists in the remains of antiquity and in the works of more modern genius, is Inspiration, and cannot be surpassed; it is perfect and eternal: Milton, Shakspeare, Michael Angelo, Rafael, the finest specimens of ancient Sculpture and Painting, and Architecture, Gothic, Grecian, Hindoo and Egyptian are the extent of the human mind. The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To suppose that Art can go beyond the finest specimens of Art that are now in the world, is not knowing what Art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the Spirit.
“It will be necessary for the Painter to say something concerning his ideas of Beauty, Strength and Ugliness.
“The beauty that is annexed and appended to folly, is a lamentable accident and error of the mortal and perishing life; it does but seldom happen; but with this unnatural mixture the sublime Artist can have nothing to do; it is fit for the burlesque. The beauty proper for sublime Art, is lineaments, or forms and features that are capable of being the receptacle of intellect; accordingly the Painter has given in his beautiful man, his own idea of intellectual Beauty. The face and limbs (?) that deviates or alters least, from infancy to old age, is the face and limbs (?) of greatest Beauty and Perfection.
“The Ugly likewise, when accompanied and annexed to imbecillity and disease, is a subject for burlesque and not for historical grandeur; the artist has imagined the Ugly man; one approaching to the beast in features and form, his forehead small, without frontals; his nose high on the ridge, and narrow; his chest and the stamina of his make, comparatively little, and his joints and his extremities large; his eyes with scarce any whites, narrow and cunning, and everything tending toward what is truly ugly; the incapability of intellect.
“The Artist has considered his strong man as a receptacle of Wisdom, a sublime energizer; his features and limbs do not spindle out into length, without strength, nor are they too large and unwieldy for his brain and bosom. Strength consists in accumulation of power to the principal seat, and from thence a regular gradation and subordination; strength in compactness, not extent nor bulk.
“The strong man acts from conscious superiority, and marches on in fearless dependence on the divine decrees, raging with the inspirations of a prophetic mind. The Beautiful man acts from duty, and anxious solicitude for the fates of those for whom he combats. The Ugly man acts from love of carnage, and delight in the savage barbarities of war, rushing with sportive precipitation into the very teeth of the affrighted enemy.
“The Roman Soldiers rolled together in a heap before them: ‘like the rolling thing before the whirlwind:’ each shew a different character, and a different expression of fear, or revenge, or envy, or blank horror, or amazement, or devout wonder and unresisting awe.