All the writers on Blake--Allan Cunningham, Alexander Gilchrist, James Smetham, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, Sir Richard Garnett--have discussed the subject, but I find the most illuminating passage in an article by James Smetham included in the second volume of Gilchrist's "Life," which I shall take leave to quote, for its matter could never be better stated: "Thought with Blake leaned largely to the side of imagery rather than to the side of organized philosophy, and we shall have to be on our guard, while reading the record of his views and opinions, against the dogmatism which was more frequently based on exalted fancies than on the rock of abiding reason and truth. The conceptive faculty working with a perception of facts singularly narrow and imperfect, projected every idea boldly into the sphere of the actual. What he _thought_, he _saw_, to all intents and purposes, and it was this sudden and sharp crystallization of inward notions into outward and visible signs which produced the impression on many beholders that reason was unseated.... We cannot but on the whole lean to the opinion that somewhere in the wonderful compound of flesh and spirit, somewhere in those recesses where the one runs into the other, he was 'slightly touched,' and by so doing we shall save ourselves the necessity of attempting to defend certain phases of his work" (such as much of the literary part of the prophetic books) "while maintaining an unqualified admiration for the mass and manner of his thoughts." This seems a just opinion. The colloquialism "slightly touched" (just that and nothing but that) is the very phrase to express this elusive, almost indefinable condition of mind. In all mankind living in conditions of time and space, a certain adjustment of themselves to these conditions, and to each other, is a necessary function of existence. The failure to comply with such an adjustment was Blake's strength and weakness--the defect of his quality. As I have said before, he firmly believed in his own inspiration, and with reason. For a mood of trance-like absorption would come upon him, his soul would be rapt in an ecstasy, he was disturbed by no impressions of earthly persons or surroundings, but was for the time being alone with his quickening vision. At such moments his mind's eye was but the retina on which God Himself projected the image. And he would permit no criticism, no questioning of work which seemed to him not his own, but produced through divine agency.