ABSTRACT
“The Imaginative Image returns by the seed of Contemplative Thought.” That was William Blake’s description of the activity of creation. Inversely, those who read him most profitably read him for the return of the imaginative image which he held in his mind’s eye while he wrote. Blake-lore or other, will of itself yield the imaginative image which is the only thing worth having from Blake. There is something of the mediaeval magician about Blake’s manner of presenting his poetry. In an especial sense it therefore takes two to make any of Blake’s poems: one to write and one to read; and the resultant pleasure to the reader will be in exact ratio to the imagination he employs. Spiritual truth was his aim, and so far was he from regarding imaginative and naturalistic painting as the same thing, that he described what he once called Historical Designing and Portrait Painting as different arts, “as distinct as any two arts can be”.
