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WILLIAM BLAKE

hindered, as an artist, by that burden of a divine message which is continually upon him. He is unconscious that with one artist the imagination may overpower the technique, as awe overpowers the senses, while to another artist the imagination gives new life to the technique. Blake did not understand Rembrandt, and imagined that he hated him; but there are a few of his pictures in which Rembrandt is strangely suggested. In 'The Adoration of the Three Kings' and in 'The Angel appearing to Zacharias' there is a lovely depth of colour, bright in dimness, which has something of the warmth and mystery of Rembrandt, and there are details in the design of 'The Three Kings' (the door open on the pointing star in the sky and on the shadowy multitude below) which are as fine in conception as anything in the Munich 'Adoration of the Shepherds.' But in these, or in the almost finer 'Christ in the Garden, sustained by an Angel' (fire flames about the descending angel, and the garden is a forest of the night), how fatal to our enjoyment is the thought of Rembrandt! To Rembrandt, too, all things were visions, but they were visions that he saw with unflinching eyes; he saw them with his