The Poet 187
nifi cent poet who affi rmed nothing except, in a most guarded way,
Eros. And thus they found an inspiration.
Shakespeare also manifests himself to them as a poet with the sort
of imaginative power that might change the world. Infi nitely fertile,
original, and daring, Shakespeare off ered an image for poetic po-
tential. Inspired as they were by Shakespeare’s (qualifi ed) affi rmation
of love and his grandeur as a creative force, the Romantic idealists
seem to have missed the aggressively anti- idealist energies of the
playwright’s work.
The question of Soul and Eros remains unresolved. The de-
tractors of Romanticism continue to fi ght against the idea that
Eros, taken up into the imagination, can change the world or some
fraction of it— and they have, in general, won at least a temporary
victor y. We no longer look to poets, and particularly not to Romantic
poets, past or pre sent, as sources of existential wisdom. But this may
change.
Perhaps the most passionate of the High Romantics was the fi rst.
William Blake came to his faith in Eros and the imagination in rel-
ative solitude. He was not well- to-do, not formally educated; he had
not been to Oxford or to Cambridge. Blake was virtually a lifelong
Londoner and made his living, often precariously, as a printer and
engraver. He was married— his wife’s name was Catherine— and de-
spite what seem to have been episodes of jealousy (probably on her
part) he was devoted to her. Blake was not only a poet, but also a
visual artist; almost all his work was illustrated with engravings.
Blake believed he had perceptions of the greatest moment to off er
his contemporaries. He modeled himself on the Hebrew prophets—
Isaiah, and Ezekiel, and Jeremiah— but his greatest inspiration was
Jesus Christ.
Yet Blake was largely ignored. Words worth read some of his work
and feared he might be mad, though Words worth’s friend Coleridge
admired what he encountered in the Songs of Innocence and of