Selections from the Writings of William Blake

"ALL beauty," says Walt Whitman, comes "from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain." The note of mechanical work is that it has no individuality; the note of a work of art is that it is full of it; so, in measuring its beauty, we are measuring some beauty of temperament in the individuality that is behind it; and it is by understanding this temperament alone that we gain understanding of beauty, or appreciate the working of that fictional element which must separate things of art from things of history. Therefore, when we come to the study of a man's work, who has done things which seem to us beautiful, we must be sure that we understand the temperament which was the cause of his art. Especially must we do so when, as in the case of William Blake, there is so much in the beauty of his art that is strange and difficult to comprehend, something, too, less easy to name beauty, which seems to obscure instead of reveal the value of his personality.