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Of Man inwards into the worlds of thought, into eternity, |
And, writing to the uncomprehending Hayley (who had called him 'gentle, visionary Blake'), he says again: 'I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.' To the newspapers of his time, on the one or two occasions when they mentioned his name, he was 'an unfortunate lunatic'; even to Lamb, who looked upon him as 'one of the most extraordinary persons of the age,' he was a man 'flown, whither I know not—to Hades or a madhouse.' To the first editor of his collected poems there seemed to be 'something in his mind not exactly sane'; and the critics of to-day still discuss his sanity as a man and as a poet.
It is true that Blake was abnormal; but what was abnormal in him was his sanity. To one who believed that 'The ruins of Time build mansions in eternity,' that 'imagination is eternity,' and that 'our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal
