Blake's decisive step in leaving Hayley and following his own will
immediately preceded the noonday glory of his genius. Hayley must have
thought that Blake was extremely ungrateful after the invariable kindness
that he had shown him; and if Hayley liked to call his neighbouring
friends around him and put his case to them, probably all, without a
single dissentient voice, would have agreed that he had shown himself a
Christian and a gentleman, and that charity itself could not demand of him
to trouble himself any further about such a crazed visionary as Blake.
Blake not only thought otherwise, but turning to the Gospel as he was wont
to do, he found a word of Christ that convinced him that Christ was on his
side. "He who is not with me is against me." There were a thousand
evidences that Hayley was not with the real Blake that was striving to
manifest himself in time, and therefore he was against him, and an enemy
to his genius. Blake went to Felpham shaken in himself and diffident. When
there is diffidence (dispersal of faith) there is a lamentable waste of
precious energy. Blake left Felpham reassured that the light he had seen
in his youth was the true light, and confident (confidence is
concentration of faith) that if he remained faithful to his real self, he
would also be found on the side of Christ, and that this true
self-confidence must result in beautiful work of the creative order. That
was the supreme hour in his life. The full vision must come. Like
Habakkuk, he was on his tower, assured that though it tarry it would come
and not tarry. He was not impatient. "The just shall live by his faith."
Blake had faith, and he asked no more; but he gained a thousandfold more,
and the full vision came to him in a way that must seem odd to a child of
the world, but wonderfully appropriate to one who understands what is the
nature of the fire that sustains and consumes the artist's soul.
During the months of 1803-4 a certain Count Truchsess, who owned a
valuable collection of pictures, exhibited them at a gallery in the New
Road, opposite Portland Place, London. The pictures were by German, Dutch,
Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and French masters. The masters included Albert
Dürer, Hans Holbein senior, Breughel, Vandyck, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da
Vinci, Bourdon, Watteau.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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