WILLIAM BLAKE
nounceable verse was certainly present when he invented the extraordinary history of "William Bond" or the maddening metre of the lines "To Mr Butts." Whatever archangel rules over utter intellectual error had certainly spread his wings of darkness over Blake when he came to the conclusion that a man ought to be bad in order to be pardoned. But these unthinkable thoughts are mostly to be found in his most unliterary productions; notably in the Prophetic Books. To put my meaning broadly, the opinions which nobody can agree with are mostly in the books that nobody can read. I really believe that this was not from Blake, but from his spirits. It is all very well for great men, like Mr Rossetti and Mr Swinburne, to trust utterly to the seraphim of Blake. They may naturally trust angels—they do not believe in them. But I do believe in angels, and incidentally in fallen angels.
There is no danger to health in being a mystic; but there may be some danger to health in being a spiritualist. It would be a very poor
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