LETTERS OF WILLIAM BLAKE.
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spectres of the dead[1] wander. This I endeavour to prevent; I, with my whole might, chain my feet to the world of duty and reality. But in vain! the faster I bind, the better is the ballast; for I, so far from being bound down, take the world with me in my flights, and often it seems lighter than a ball of wool rolled by the windJ Bacon and Newton[2] would prescribe ways of making the world heavier to me, and Pitt[3] would prescribe
- ↑ cp. Milton, p. 3 (invocation): "Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poet's Song | . . . Come into my hand | By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm | From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry | The Eternal Great Humanity Divine planted his Paradise, | And in it caus'd the Spectres of the Dead to take sweet form | In likeness of himself."
- ↑ Types of rational philosophy and empirical science, both enemies of Imagination, cp. Jerusalem, p. 54, 11. 15-18: "But the Spectre like a hoar frost & a Mildew rose over Albion, | Saying, I am God, O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power! | Am I not Bacon & Newton & Locke who teach Humility to Man? | Who teach Doubt and Experiment "; Milton, p. 43, 11. 1-8: "To bathe in the waters of Life: to wash off the Not Human. | I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of Inspiration, | To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour, | To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration, | To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albion's covering, | To take off his filthy garments & clothe him with Imagination, | To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration | That it shall no longer dare to mock with the aspersion of Madness, cast on the Inspired"; and the remark quoted by Crabb Robinson in his journal (Gilchrist, 1880, vol. i. p. 384): "Bacon, Locke and Newton are the three great teachers of atheism, or Satan's doctrine." The subject of one of Blake's "printed drawings" is Newton overshadowed by utter darkness, drawing a geometrical figure with compasses on a scroll upon the earth.
- ↑ The promoter of war. cp. "The Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth," in the National Gallery: Behemoth representing war by land.
