Perhaps the best criticism ever uttered offhand about the art of William Blake was Rodin's, who, when shown some facsimiles of Blake's drawings by brilliant Arthur Symons with the explanation that Blake "used literally to see those figures, they are not mere inventions," replied: "Yes. He saw them once; he should have seen them three or four times." And this acute summing up of Blake's gravest defect is further strengthened by a remark made by one of his most sympathetic commentators, Laurence Binyon. Blake once said: "The lavish praise I have received from all quarters for invention and drawing has generally been accompanied by this: 'He can conceive, but he cannot execute.' This absurd assertion has done and may still do me the greatest mischief." Now comments Mr. Binyon: "In spite of the artist's protest this continues to be the current criticism on Blake's work; and yet the truth lies rather on the other side. It is not so much in his execution as in the failure to mature his conceptions that his defect is to be found." Again: "His temperament unfitted him for success in carrying his work further; his want was not lack of skill, but lack of patience." If this sounds paradoxical we find Symons admitting that Rodin had hit the nail on the head. "There, it seems to me, is the fundamental truth about the art of Blake; it is a record of vision which has not been thoroughly mastered even as vision." Notwithstanding the neglect to which Blake was subjected during his lifetime and the misunderstanding ever since his death of his extraordinary and imaginative designs, poetry, and vaticinations, it is disquieting to see how books about Blake are beginning to pile up. He may even prove as popular as Ibsen. A certain form of genius serves as a starting-point for critical performances. Blake is the most admirable example, though Whitman and Browning are in the same class. Called cryptic by their own, they are too well understood by a later generation. Wagner once swam in the consciousness of the elect; and he was understood. Baudelaire understood him, so Liszt. Wagner to-day is the property of the man in the street, who whistles him, and Ibsen is already painfully yielding up his precious secrets to relentless "expounding" torturers. As for Maeterlinck, he is become a mere byword in literary clubs, where they discuss his Bee in company with the latest Shaw epigram. "Even caviare, it seems, may become a little flyblown," exclaims Mr. Dowden. Everything is being explained. Oh, happy age! Who once wrote: "A hundred fanatics are found to a theological or metaphysical statement, but not one for a geometric problem"?