|
The grave is heaven's golden gate,
William Blake. |
When Blake speaks of —
The visions that my soul has seen,
*****
borne on solemn wing
From the vast regions of the grave,
it is no metaphorical flourish, but plain facts he means and feels. This is cultivating 'the Arts' in a high spirit indeed.
The simple beauty and grandeur of the illustrations to Blair's Grave are within the comprehension of most who possess any feeling for what is elevated in art. Fuseli's evidence in their favour, despite turgid Johnsonianism, which, as usual with him, fails to conceal the uneasy gait of a man not at home in our language, is, in part, lucid and to the purpose.
'The author of the moral series before us,' he writes, after some preliminary generalizing on the triteness of the ordinary types employed in art, 'endeavoured to awake sensibility by touching our sympathies with nearer, less ambiguous, and less ludicrous imagery than what mythology, Gothic superstition, or symbols as far-fetched as
