Byzantine ideals in the Seven Lamps of Architecture:—
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The rolling heap of the thunder cloud, divided by rents and multiplied by wreaths, yet gathering them all into its broad, torrid, and towering zone, and its midnight darkness opposite: the scarcely less majestic heave of the mountain side, all torn and traversed by depth of defile and ridge of rock, yet never losing the unity of its illumined swell and shadowy decline; and the head of every mighty tree, rich with tracery of leaf and bough, yet terminated against the sky by a true line, and rounded by a green horizon, which, multiplied in the distant forest, makes it look bossy from above; all these mark, for a great and honoured law, that diffusion of light for which the Byzantine ornaments were designed. |
But I must take you back again for a moment to Blake's childlike nature. We discover in it certain inevitable faults of his virtue. His exaggerations in praise and blame with his often outrageous and ugly figures are alike explained by his lack of the gift of weighing evidences. Comparisons to him were odious: just as to the child who, when asked which of the two he loves better, insists that he loves both best. Comparison demands intellect and intellect
