Think of the mad
poet, William Blake, assuring his sedate contemporaries,
All pictures that's painted with sense and with thought
Are painted by madmen as sure as a groat.
[Footnote: See fragment CI.]
What chance did he have of recognition?
This is merely indicative of the endless quarrel between the inspired
poet and the man of reason. The eighteenth century contempt for poetic
madness finds typical expression in Pope's satirical lines,
Some demon stole my pen (forgive the offense)
And once betrayed me into common sense.
[Footnote: _Dunciad_.]
And it is answered by Burns' characterization of writers depending upon
dry reason alone:
A set o' dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
They gang in sticks and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak,
And syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint of Greek.[Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik_.]
The feud was perhaps at its bitterest between the eighteenth century
classicists and such poets as Wordsworth [Footnote: See the _Prelude_.
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