it is for the spirits only; he sees the words fly about the room the moment he has put them on paper, and his book is then published. A man so favoured, of course, has sources of wisdom and truth peculiar to himself. I will not pretend to give you an account of his religious and philosophical opinions. They are a strange compound of Christianity, Spinozism, and Platonism. I must confine myself to what he has said about your brother's works, and[1] I fear this may lead me far enough to fatigue you in following me. After what I have said, Mr. W. will not be flattered by knowing that Blake deems him the only poet of the age, nor much alarmed by hearing that, like Muley Moloch, Blake thinks that he is often in his works an Atheist. Now, according to Blake, Atheism consists in worshipping the natural world, which same natural world, properly speaking, is nothing real, but a mere illusion produced by Satan. Milton was for a great part of his life an Atheist, and therefore has fatal errors in his Paradise Lost, which he has often begged Blake to confute. Dante (though now with God) lived and died an Atheist. He was the slave of the world and time. But Dante and Wordsworth, in spite of their Atheism, were inspired by the Holy Ghost. Indeed, all real poetry is the work of the Holy Ghost, and Wordsworth's poems (a large pro-
- ↑ 'And as I am requested to copy what he has written for the purpose' crossed out.
