divine labyrinth. If 'the world of imagination' was 'the world of
eternity,' as this doctrine implied, it was of less importance to know men
and nature than to distinguish the beings and substances of imagination
from those of a more perishable kind, created by the phantasy, in
uninspired moments, out of memory and whim; and this could best be done by
purifying one's mind, as with a flame, in study of the works of the great
masters, who were great because they had been granted by divine favour a
vision of the unfallen world from which others are kept apart by the
flaming sword that turns every way; and by flying from the painters who
studied 'the vegetable glass' for its own sake, and not to discover there
the shadows of imperishable beings and substances, and who entered into
their own minds, not to make the unfallen world a test of all they heard
and saw and felt with the senses, but to cover the naked spirit with 'the
rotten rags of memory' of older sensations. The struggle of the first part
of his life had been to distinguish between these two schools, and to
cleave always to the Florentine, and so to escape the fascination of those
who seemed to him to offer the sleep of nature to a spirit weary with the
labours of inspiration; but it was only after his return to London from
Felpham in 1804 that he finally escaped from 'temptations and
perturbations' which sought to destroy 'the imaginative power' at 'the
hands of Venetian and Flemish Demons.' 'The spirit of Titian'--and one
must always remember that he had only seen poor engravings, and what his
disciple, Palmer, has called 'picture-dealers' Titians'--'was particularly
active in raising doubts concerning the possibility of executing without a
model; and when once he had raised the doubt it became easy for him to
snatch away the vision time after time'; and Blake's imagination
'weakened' and 'darkened' until a 'memory of nature and of the pictures of
various schools possessed his mind, instead of appropriate execution'
flowing from the vision itself. But now he wrote, 'O glory, and O delight!
I have entirely reduced that spectrous fiend to his station'--he had
overcome the merely reasoning and sensual portion of the mind--'whose
annoyance has been the ruin of my labours for the last twenty years of my
life.... I speak with perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which
has passed upon me. Nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him, I have
had twenty; thank G