Blake’s diagnosis of the problem of his age was, like 
Pope’s in The Dunciad , a direct confrontation of the forces 
shaping human perception. That he sought mythical form by 
which to render his vision was both necessary and ineffectual. 
For myth is the mode of simultaneous awareness of a complex 
group of causes and effects. In an age of fragmented, lineal 
awareness, such as produced and was in turn greatly 
exaggerated by Gutenberg technology, mythological vision 
remains quite opaque. The Romantic poets fell far short of 
Blake’s mythical or simultaneous vision. They were faithful to 
Newton’s single vision and perfected the picturesque outer 
landscape as a means of isolating single states of the inner 
life. (3)

     It is instructive for the history of human sensibility to 
note how the popular vogue of the Gothic romance in Blake’s