Doubtless, nothing quite like them was ever pitched out headlong into the world as they were. Let all readers and all critics get rid of that notion for good-clear their minds of it utterly and with all haste let them know and remember, having once been told it, that in these strangest of all written books there is purpose as well as power, meaning as well as mystery. It must be enough to reply here that he was by no means mad, in any sense that would authorise us in rejecting his own judgment of his own aims and powers on a plea which would be held insufficient in another man's case. We shall not again pause to rebut the familiar cry of response, to the effect that he was mad and not accountable for the uttermost madness of error.
Now, first of all, we are to recollect that Blake himself regarded these works as his greatest, and as containing the sum of his achieved ambitions and fulfilled desires: as in effect inspired matter, of absolute imaginative truth and eternal import.
Before entering upon any system of remark or comment on the Prophetic Books, we may set down in as few and distinct words as possible the reasons which make this a thing seriously worth doing nay, even requisite to be done, if we would know rather the actual facts of the man's nature than the circumstances and accidents of his life.
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