The death of its author, while as yet but seven chapters of his work had been printed, would preclude severe criticism, even if the spirit and purpose with which he entered upon his undertaking, and which he sustained to its close, did not dispose us to look leniently upon imperfections of detail. One word, in the beginning, regarding the book before us. From this book, chiefly, we propose to lay before our readers a slight sketch of the life of a man who, whether sane or insane, was one of the most remarkable productions of his own or of any age. Blake, in which he strenuously and ably opposed the theory of insanity. Arthur Gilchrist, late a barrister of the Middle Temple, a man, therefore, who must have been accustomed to weigh evidence, and who would not have been likely to decide upon insufficient grounds, wrote a life of Mr. There are a few persons, however, who are not disposed to let this verdict stand unchallenged. But some Daniel was found wise enough to come to judgment, and pronounce the poet-painter mad whereupon society at once composed itself, and went on its way rejoicing. It had never had to do with such an apparition before, and was at its wits’ end. When William Blake flashed across the path of English polite society, society was confounded. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring them that it was “ only a phenomenon,” was but one of a great host of wiseacres who stand ready with brush and paint-pot to label every new development, and fancy that in so doing they have abundantly answered every reasonable inquiry concerning cause, character, and consequence. Indeed, so great is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often ready to accept classification for explanation and having given our mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as mysterious.
There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the ranks and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. The occurrence of an event out of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little ant-hill of ours.
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