Here and there strange glancing lights and phosphorescent stars emit a milky radiance, but it is some few minutes before the eye can distinguish the head and back of Leviathan. On either side of the great halo appears a man's form; one holds the crescent moon by way of sickle, the other presses heavily upon a harrow. They are the Reaper, Death, and the Ploughman Equality. All is steeped in gloomy twilight touched here and there with subdued yet brilliant light, as of moonlight on water. Strange little figures seem to gather form out of the brownish mist before one's very eyes, and there is something of a miraculous charm on this cosmos--the fruit of the travail of Blake's intellect. [Illustration: THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF PITT GUIDING BEHEMOTH Tempera. 1809 or earlier. In the National Gallery] Of serenity, of clarity, there is none; but Blake's virtue, his quality with its necessary attendant defects, dominates this work and makes it precious in the sense of a unique record of a unique conception. Therefore it is fittingly placed as a representative of Blake's genius in our National Palace of Art. What the place assigned to Blake by future generations will be is not for me to predict. That he has been gravely misapprehended and foolishly neglected until the last few years is common knowledge, but even to-day the ranks of his true lovers are scattered and few, though there are some people who affirm that an exaggerated distinction, an inflated value, attaches to his name at present, as a result of the swing of time's pendulum. Such people, however, are not among those who under any circumstances would be likely to admire Blake or appreciate his unique point of view.