The truth is that Blake was not a great thinker, still less a system-builder. He ought to have found the best Christian system while young and kept to it. Then he could have lived his life of vision within coherent bounds. Clear, sharp dogma, like outline in art, would have given rest to his mind, substance to his visions, and saved him from the waste of pouring out a torrent of incoherent sayings containing scraps of gnosticism, theosophy, rosicrucianism, and almost every heresy under the sun. The master-mind in his youth who could have given him a sound system was Dr Johnson, and he would not listen to him. How should the arch-rebel pay any attention to the arch-conservator? Dr Johnson said many foolish things about things of no great importance: he was wise in great matters. An ounce of folly, like a dead fly in the ointment, suffices to put off the fastidious rebel, who will seize hold of any excuse. Eventually Blake subscribed to the same creed as Dr Johnson. That surely is a marvellous unanimity for such diverse minds. The master-mind in his age who could have given him a better system than his own, and to whom he was beginning to listen, was Dante. His catholicism may have been of a medieval pattern, but it was very little infected with the time-spirit; it is even now finer than Swedenborg's fabrication, and modern compared with the gnosticism that bulked so largely in Blake's mind. Blake makes no disciples, and no school can claim him, but he speaks to all who have any mental equipment. His vision of Christ, if we can make it our own and fill out its defects, will put us beyond the modern worship of the superman, and take us out of that sectarianism which gains ascendancy for a little while because of its lightness and fragmentariness. The confusion in Blake's mental life affects his art. He declared consistently in times of clear vision that outline, form, and foundation are the essence of spiritual things. This is beyond anything to be found in Sir Joshua's _Discourses_, and anticipates Benedetto Croce when he says that art is an ultimate, that "form is constant and is spiritual activity," while "matter is changeable," yet he accomplished many designs that Reynolds could have taught him to correct. His later poems suffer still more. The energy in them is terrific, and they are filled with flashes of inspiration; but their atmosphere is murky, and never clears for more than fifty lines at a time. They are storehouses, but the one who would get anything out of them must bring his taper with him. The early short poems, on the contrary, shine with their own light. _The Tiger_ and _The Emmet_ are written before his mind has time to plunge into the penumbra of his disorderly system.