RITING in 1833, six years after William Blake, the poet-artist, had gone to immortality, Edward Fitzgerald said, "To me there is a particular interest in this man's writing and drawing, in the strangeness of the constitution of his mind." That is the interest of William Blake today when his poetry fails to thrill or to inspire, and when his highest claim to be considered an artist rests on a series of drawings and engravings called "Illustrations to the Book of Job".

William Blake had visual hallucinations. At least, he had the capacity to see the creations of his imagination with the same vividness as if they had been before his eyes, and he maintained that they were before his eyes. He contended that things whose reality cannot be proved, such as angels, people deceased for ages, and buildings demolished for centuries, presented themselves in his visual field. He maintained it with sincerity and determination and he drew what he said he saw. But the fact that a man has hallucinations is not sufficient to label him "insane". Conduct that is prejudicial to others' happiness, welfare, and comfort is an essential condition, and none of William Blake's biographers or commentators has described such conduct. Now there comes along a young American who is determined to show that William Blake was sane. To many psychiatrists like myself it will undoubtedly seem an unnecessary labor, but a gratifying one, for sympathetic hero handling is a kindly thing to observe.

We never cease to marvel that persons who are "mad" can create or copy so masterfully that the admiration of contemporaries is compelled and the gratitude of posterity earned. This, despite the long list of accomplishments in the world of art and letters by men who have been potentially or actually mad.

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Mr. Bruce opens one of his chapters with the sentence: "Blake, in other words, was neurotic." Now, the word "neurotic" must have some very specific meaning for our young author, otherwise he would not declare himself in this dramatic way. If William Blake was neurotic, there is no indication of it in Mr. Bruce's book. William Blake was psychotic. He had what is called for purposes of facile designation a manic-depressive temperament. The pattern of that temperament can be described with the same specificity as pneumonia can be; practically the only thing about it that we do not know is its cause, but it is only very recently that we have known the cause of pneumonia. I do not consider that this is the proper place for a disquisition on the individual psychic functions, particularly on the one known as affectivity, which would be necessary were I to make a readily comprehensible description of the manic-depressive psychosis, whether it reveals itself in shadowy outlines or majestic proportions. Mr. Bruce writes, "To say confidently that Blake suffered from mythomania, or from automatism, or from occasional hyperæsthesia, or from manic-depressive

tendencies, or that he did not tend toward a definite schizophrenia is to add polysyllables rather than illumination to the discussion of his state." This is an attitude of preciosity on the part of Mr. Bruce that is very offensive to me. If he does not know what "schizophrenia" means, then he should consult a dictionary and not display his infirmities to the world. If he knows a better word, that is, a more comprehensive or a more descriptive word for personality cleavage, I suggest that he submit it. What further illumination concerning the mental processes of an individual can be desired than is conveyed in the statement that he is a manic-depressive personality, or that he displayed the manifestations of the mental disorder known as the manic-depressive psychosis?

A few years ago, in a book entitled "Idling in Italy", I said anent Giovanni Papini (who in 1920 was quite unknown to the American public) that no one unfamiliar with the disorder of the mind called manic-depressive psychosis could fully understand him.

There is no one more sane and businesslike than the former Futurist, yet the reactions of his supersensitive nature have great similarity with this mental disorder, present, in embryo, in many people. In every display of the manic-depressive temperament, there is a period of emotional, physical and intellectual activity that surmounts every obstacle, brushes aside every barrier, leaps over every hurdle. During its dominancy, the victim respects neither law nor convention; the goal is his only object. He does not always know where he is going and he is not concerned with it; he is concerned only with going. When the spectator sees the road over which he has travelled on his winged horse he finds it littered with the débris that Pegasus has trampled upon and crushed.

This period of hyperactivity is invariably followed by a time of depression, of inadequacy, of emotional barrenness, of intellectual sterility, of physical impotency, of spiritual frigidity. The sun from which the body and the soul have had their warmth and their glow falls below the horizon of the unfortunate's existence and he senses the

terrors of the dark and the rigidity of beginning congelation. Then, when hope and warmth have all but gone and only life, mere life without colour or emotion, remains, and the necessity of living forever in a world perpetually enshrouded in darkness with no differentiation in the débris remaining after the tornado, then the sun gradually peeps up, illuminates, warms, revives, fructifies the earth, and the sufferer becomes normal — normal save in the moments or hours of fear when he contemplates having again to brave the hurricane or to breast the deluge. But once the wind begins to blow with a velocity that bespeaks the readvent of the tornado, he throws off inhibition and goes out in the open, holds up the torch that shall light the whole world, and with his megaphone from the top of Helicon shouts: "This way to the revolution."

I contend that anyone who will read even the summaries of the chapters of Mr. Bruce's book will need no further evidence to be convinced that William Blake, who had "everywhere the poet's firm persuasion that things were so, who stuck to a choice that was contemned, to a taste that was laughed at"; who was as immune to ridicule as a tortoise is to admonition; who spoke his mind on all occasions even when it clashed with authority; who, like the master potter, knew, knew, knew; who swung backward and forward from high exaltation to pits of melancholy; who listened to messengers from heaven daily and nightly and composed under their dictation a poem which he considered the grandest that this world. contained, even though he was never able to find one purchaser; who received Richard Coeur-de-Lion at a quarter past twelve, midnight, and painted his portrait though he had been dead several centuries; who displayed a persecutory state of mind when he was depressed and a self sufficiency when he was exhalted that brooked no curbing; who took no thought for the morrow and was as unable to take care of himself as a two year old child, was of manic-depressive temperament and

that if he escaped being sent to Bethlehem Hospital, which was vulgarly called Bedlam, he is entitled to our belated congratulations.

When Mr. Bruce ceases to be annoying about adjectives, he is sometimes amusing and often amazing. "William Blake had the neurotic's need for dependence on someone outside himself." A neurotic is an individual who has some nervous disorder or disease, functional or organic. A typical nervous disorder is migraine, sick headache. I could easily enumerate a score of the world's great men and women who have been thus afflicted. What was their need for dependence on someone outside themselves? "He had the neurotic's sense of time." What can that possibly be? Was it the sense of time that Dostoyevsky had just before the convulsions that attended his epileptic attacks appeared. Dostoyevsky was a neurotic one of the most typical that ever lived, perhaps. He maintained that the few seconds previous to the motor manifestation of an attack were a timeless eternity. If it lasted another fractional part of a second, he could not possibly survive it. Did William Blake have this kind of sense of time?

He could not tolerate a pedantic, pretentious, stupid, pachydermatous

patron, William Hayley. According to Sinclair Lewis there are only two races of people, the neurotic and the stupid: William Hayley was stupid, William Blake was neurotic. At least, it can be said of this reasoning that it offers a better foundation for Mr. Bruce's thesis than that which he has heretofore provided.

William Blake was a happy man, for he believed in himself. He was a lucky man his wife believed in him. He was a courageous man; he threw a trespassing sailor, emboldened by strong drink, out of his garden and was tried for high treason. Yet he patiently tolerated the inquisitive visits of the greatest bore of his time, Crabb Robinson, without even threat of assault. He did not get his just deserts from his contemporaries, but posterity has more than made up for their niggardliness, and Mr. Bruce has given posterity a leg up. Had he dwelt more on the value and significance of Blake's art and less on his "neurosis" he would have served us better. But his book is a snappy, concise, readable account of a man who had faith in himself and who, finally, compelled others to acknowledge his merit.

William Blake in This World. By Harold Bruce. Harcourt, Brace and Co.

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Popularity

LONDON, June 1, 1925.

T is possible to look at the spring publishing season with a kind of definiteness at this stage; and I regret to say that it has been a bad one. A few good books have been issued, but the sales of all books have been poor. From every side I hear the same tale, and I am told that even the best selling class has sold less well than was to have been expected. The cross word puzzle is in some quarters blamed, and in others the wireless, although I think the real cause may be that old books have been read more than new ones. Personally, I have not done any cross word puzzles, and upon a few occasions I have listened with a good deal of impatience to the wireless; but books have been the mainstay of my leisure hours during this season as they have been in other seasons. Most of my reading, however, has been of old books. This, not solely in order to save money, but because the new books did not seem to me to be specially attractive. I am therefore inclined to blame the new books for their own lack of success. But I must not forget to include among the reasons for a bad season one which was given to me by a publisher. He said that new books were not selling because the public taste had deteriorated. This sounds rather like the change in human nature which Mrs. Woolf recently discovered to have taken place in or about the year

1910.

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I said just now that I had listened in upon several occasions with discontent. One reason for this discontent is that the circumstances under which I have listened have been less favorable than those enjoyed by others. What in England are called "atmospherics" have interfered with the transmission; and a great deal of Morse dotting and dashing will spoil one's enjoyment of the finest program in the world. thought that I should like to hear Mr. Chesterton speak about Sadler's Wells Theatre, that I should like to hear Mr. Squire read some modern poetry, that I should like to hear Mr. Gilligan tell something about the conditions of cricket in Australia. I listened to all three, but without satisfaction. Mr. Chesterton spoke clearly and characteristically, but one missed the swaying motion of his body and the cheerful solemnity of his demeanor. His voice sounded deeper than usual. Mr. Squire's selection of poems was perhaps a little lugubrious, or his manner of reciting the poems was a little gloomy, or perhaps I wanted my dinner. At any rate, although I thought the notion of giving the poems a good one, I was not uplifted by the occasion as I ought to have been. Mr. Gilligan was a disappointment. He told listeners nothing that they did not know already, and he did it in a sort of journalese which I found painful. I do not know what I expected of Mr. Gilligan, who is a cricketer and not a lecturer, but I

thought we might have had a really personal effort. Mr. Chesterton I have heard so often in the flesh that it may be I expected too much of him. Mr. Squire I thought might have been less serious than he was. From these experiences, and from an attempt to hear understandingly a selection from "Hamlet" given by Mr. Barrymore and others, I am prepared to say that Bernard Shaw's threat to theatrical managers that unless they looked about a little more the ordinary playgoer would prefer to hear his plays over the wireless rather than go to the trouble of visiting the theatre at all, seems to me to be nonsensical. Mr. Shaw has evidently not grasped the fact that people go to the theatre not only to see a play but to put on their best clothes, to dine at a restaurant, and to see the world in the remaining stalls of the theatre. Moreover, it was quite impossible to grasp what was happening while "Hamlet" was being performed. The Poet Laureate, by the way, said in the preface to his latest anthology of poetry that common humanity would learn the best manner of English speech by hearing English spoken in the best manner over the wireless. In this the Poet Laureate was in error. Apart from the speakers whom I have mentioned, all of whom were men of some reverence for the English language, the pronunciations I have heard over the wireless have been exceedingly queer. They have not been pure at all and in fact such mispronunciations as "perinotitis", "athaletic," "guvverment", "reppertwah", and "preppertory" (all of which have been heard during the last few months, along with others which I do not recall) tell against the Poet Laureate's theory. Something better will have to be done if intelligent readers of books are to be lured from their preference. No; on the whole I

think the books must be blamed for their own lack of success. The considerable sales of such works as "The Constant Nymph", "A Passage to India", and "Those Barren Leaves" make it appear that a good book can still have a public.

I am not saying that all books which sell well are good, or that all good books sell well. It does happen that some good work does not immediately appeal to minds of its own age. But I think there may be some cant about the whole question of sales. Books are like men. Some of them are more popular than others. Our friends find us likable for different reasons, and we do not appeal to all men as we appeal to our friends. Some people, in fact, find us the reverse of agreeable. I was talking to a man the other day about a well known English critic. I objected that this critic's manners were distasteful to me. I said that he was personally rude, and that I did not enjoy the company of rude people, since to me a degree of courtesy is an essential of any polite intercourse. My friend, who condemned the critic as a writer, replied to my criticisms of the critic as a man by saying that he was "a rough diamond". Now this rough diamond does no doubt displease by his demeanor many who would be ready to respect his integrity if he were not so harsh in manner. His work, which is more mannerly than his normal carriage, would no doubt attract readers more than it does if he had the grace of some other critics. It is on the whole able and sincere work, but it is not attractive. Accordingly, it is not very popular. There is a dryness about it which does not please. This dryness, however, is no more deliberate than is the charm of many other writers. Is