One
incident my
English Literature teacher recalled to us really brought home how much of a
humanitarian, and how much of a
doer, as opposed to a thinker, the man was.
The London of Blake's day was, to put it lightly, a shithole. If you've ever visited either of the Pakistani cities Lahore or Karachi you'll almost understand just how foul Blake's London was. Nobody seemed to be happy, children lost their innocence too early. Single-room flats designed for one or two people occupied by whole families, that sort of thing. Not knowing where your next meal was going to come from. The worst parts of Dostoyevsky's St. Petersburg, and then some.
Well one day as Blake was walking through the streets of London, pontificating (as he did, in his fashion), he heard a commotion. What he saw was a boy was trying his best to run with his feet chained together. Apparantly he was trying to run away from home, from his father who beat and abused him, chained him up and locked him in the cellar. The father had obviously gone out, probably to spend his money in the alehouse or on prostitutes or whatever. This whole scene enraged Blake to such an extent that when he saw the boy's father going to beat the boy and throw him back in the house, and the onlookers pretending they saw nothing and trying to get on with their business, 'doesn't concern us, why should we interfere?', he thought right, I've had enough of this. He took the man and beat him till his brain bled, then beat him some more.
This little anecdote, little snapshot of the life of this great man is one of the many reasons why William Blake is the personal hero of my English teacher- and now me, too.