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WILLIAM BLAKE

Heaven; for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is the capacity of pain.[1]

I include among the glimpses of truth this assertion, 'I know what is true by internal conviction. A doctrine is stated. My heart tells me It must be true.' I remarked, in confirmation of it, that, to an unlearned man, what are called the external evidences of religion can carry no conviction with them; and this he assented to.

After my first evening with him at Aders's, I made the remark in my journal, that his observations, apart from his Visions and references to the spiritual world, were sensible and acute. In the sweetness of his countenance and gentility of his manner he added an indescribable grace to his conversation. I added my regret, which I must now repeat, at my inability to give more than incoherent thoughts. Not altogether my fault perhaps.


25/2/52.

On the 17th I called on him in his house in Fountain's Court in the Strand. The interview was a short one, and what I saw was more remarkable than what I heard. He was at work engraving in a small bedroom, light, and looking out on a mean yard. Everything in the room squalid and indicating poverty, except himself. And there was

  1. 'It was after my first interview with him that I expressed what I must repeat now—my regret' crossed out.