Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/367

A STRANGE BOOK 35I poems would have been far more shapely and luminous and valuable. But he was simply " experimenting " on himself in " hours of recreation ; " as if any truly celestial influx could pour into a man thus trifling to gratify his curiosity; so he comes to the feast of the bridegroom without the wedding garment on, the caprice of his fantasy forbidding purifica- tion and improvement of dress, and he incurs the Gospel doom. We have had wonderful improvisa- tions, but surely never as the result of experimental pastime. "Art has not wrote here, neither was there any time to consider how to set it punctually down, according to the right understanding of the letters, but all was ordered according to the direction of the Spirit, which often went in haste ; so that in many words, letters may be wanting, and in some places a capital letter for a word ; so that the penman's hand, by reason he was not accustomed to it, did often shake. And though I could have wrote in a more accurate, fair, and plain manner, yet the reason was this, that the burning fire, often forced for- ward with speed, and the hand and pen must hasten directly after it ; for it comes and goes as a sudden shower. ... I can write nothing of myself, but as a child which neither knows nor understands anything, which neither has ever been learnt, but only that which the Lord vouchsafes to know in me, according to the measure as Himself manifests in me." This is part of the account which the poor ignorant shoemaker Jacob Boehme or Behmen gives us of his inspiration and improvisation : he was not making experiments in hours of recreation when " the burning fire forced forward with speed, and the hand and pen must hasten directly after it." But enough of this part of the subject. Dr. Wilkinson himself may soon have become aware of the failure of an experiment so