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WILLIAM BLAKE

obligations to Methodism for its supply of numerous cases. Hence the primitive feelings of religion may be misled and produce insanity; that is what I would contend for, and in that sense religion often leads to insanity.' Blake has written: 'Methodism, etc., p. 154. Cowper came to me and said: "Oh! that I were insane, always. I will never rest. Can not you make me truly insane? I will never rest till I am so. Oh! that in the bosom of God I was hid. You retain health and yet are mad as any of us all—over us all—mad as a refuge from unbelief—from Bacon, Newton, and Locke." 'What does this mean but that 'madness,' the madness of belief in spiritual things, must be complete if it is to be effectual, and that, once complete, there is no disturbance of bodily or mental health, as in the doubting and distracted Cowper, who was driven mad, not by the wildness of his belief, but by the hesitations of his doubt?

Attempts have been made to claim Blake for an adept of magic. But whatever cabbalistical terms he may have added to the somewhat composite and fortuitous naming of his mythology ('all but names of persons