PART II: RECORDS FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES
(I.) EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY, LETTERS, AND REMINISCENCES OF HENRY CRABB ROBINSON, TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ORIGINAL MSS. IN DR. WILLIAMS'S LIBRARY, 1810-1852
'Of all the records of these his latter years,' says Mr. Swinburne in his book on Blake, 'the most valuable, perhaps, are those furnished by Mr. Crabb Robinson, whose cautious and vivid transcription of Blake's actual speech is worth more than much vague remark, or than any commentary now possible to give.' Through the kind permission of the Librarian of Dr. Williams's Library, where the Crabb Robinson MSS. are preserved, I am able to give, for the first time, an accurate and complete text of every reference to Blake in the _Diary, Letters_, and _Reminiscences_, which have hitherto been printed only in part, and with changes as well as omissions. In an entry in his Diary for May 13, 1848, Crabb Robinson says: 'It is strange that I, who have no imagination, nor any power beyond that of a logical understanding, should yet have great respect for the mystics.' This respect for the mystics, to which we owe the notes on Blake, was part of an inexhaustible curiosity in human things, and in things of the mind, which made of Crabb Robinson the most searching and significant reporter of the nineteenth century. Others may have understood Blake better than he did, but no one else was so attentive to his speech, and thus so faithful an interpreter of his meaning.
In copying from the MS. I have followed the spelling, not however preserving abbreviations such as 'Bl:' for 'Blake,' due merely to haste, and I have modified the punctuation and added commas of quotation only when the writer's carelessness in these matters was likely to be confusing. Otherwise the transcript is literal and verbatim, and I have added in footnotes any readings of possible interest which have been crossed out in the manuscript.
(1) FROM CRABB ROBINSON'S DIARY
1825
_December_
10 ... Dined with Aders. A very remarkable and interesting evening. The party _Blake_ the painter and Linnell--also a painter and engraver--to dinner. In the evening came Miss Denman and Miss Flaxman.
10_th December_ 1825
BLAKE
I will put down as they occur to me without method all I can recollect of the conversation of this remarkable man. Shall I call him Artist or Genius--or Mystic--or Madman? Probably he is all. He has a most interesting appearance. He is now old--pale with a Socratic countenance, and an expression of great sweetness, but bordering on weakness--except when his features are animated by[1] expression, and then he has an air of inspiration about him. The conversation was on art, and on poetry, and on religion; but it was my object, and I was successful, in drawing him out, and in so getting from him an avowal of his _peculiar_ sentiments. I was aware before of the nature of his impressions, or I should at times have been at a loss to understand him. He was shewn soon after he entered the room some compositions of Mrs. Aders which he cordially praised. And he brought with him an engraving of his Canterbury Pilgrims for Aders. One of the figures resembled one in one of Aders's pictures. 'They say I stole it from this picture, but I did it 20 years before I knew of the picture--however, in my youth I was always studying this kind of paintings. No wonder there is a resemblance.' In this he seemed to explain _humanly_ what he had done, but he at another time spoke of his paintings as being what he had seen in his visions. And when he said _my visions_ it was in the ordinary unemphatic tone in which we speak of trivial matters that every one understands and cares nothing about. In the same tone he said repeatedly, the 'Spirit told me.' I took occasion to say--You use the same word as Socrates used. What resemblance do you suppose is there between your spirit and the spirit of Socrates? 'The same as between our countenance.' He paused and added--'I was Socrates.' And then, as if correcting himself, 'A sort of brother. I must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them.'
It was before this, that I had suggested on very obvious philosophical grounds the _impossibility_ of supposing an immortal being created--an eternity _a parte post_ without an eternity _a parte ante._ This is an obvious truth I have been many (perhaps 30) years fully aware of. His eye brightened on my saying this, and he eagerly concurred--'To be sure it is impossible. We are all co-existent with God--members of the Divine body. We are all partakers of the Divine nature.' In this, by the bye, Blake has but adopted an ancient Greek idea--query of Plato? As connected with this idea I will mention here (though it formed part of our talk, walking homeward) that on my asking in what light he viewed the great question concerning the Divinity of Jesus Christ, he said_--'He is the only God_.' But then he added--'And so am I and so are you.' Now he had just before (and this occasioned my question) been speaking of the errors of Jesus Christ--He was wrong in suffering Himself to be crucified. He should not have attacked the Government. He had no business with such matters. On my inquiring how he reconciled this with the sanctity and divine qualities of Jesus, he said He was not then become the Father. Connecting as well as one can these fragmentary sentiments, it would be hard to give Blake's station between Christianity, Platonism, and Spinosism. Yet he professes to be very hostile to Plato, and reproaches Wordsworth with being not a Christian but a Platonist.
It is one of the subtle remarks of Hume on certain religious speculations that the tendency of them is to make men indifferent to whatever takes place by destroying all ideas of good and evil. I took occasion to apply this remark to something Blake said. If so, I said, there is no use in discipline or education, no difference between good and evil. He hastily broke in on me--'There is no use in education. I hold it wrong. It is the great sin.[2] It is eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was the fault of Plato--he knew of nothing but of the virtues and vices and good and evil There is nothing in all that. Every thing is good in God's eyes.' On my putting the obvious question--Is there nothing absolutely evil in what men do? 'I am no judge of that. Perhaps not in God's Eyes.' Though on this and other occasions he spoke as if he denied altogether the existence of evil, and as if we had nothing to do with right and wrong. It being sufficient to consider all things as alike the work of God. [I interposed with the German word objectively, which he approved of.] Yet at other times he spoke of error as being in heaven. I asked about the _moral_ character of Dante in writing his Vision: was he pure? '_Pure_' said Blake. 'Do you think there is any purity in God's eyes? The angels in heaven are no more so than we--"he chargeth his angels with folly."' He afterwards extended this to the Supreme Being--he is liable to error too. Did he not repent him that he had made Nineveh?
It is easier to repeat the personal remarks of Blake than these metaphysical speculations so nearly allied to the most opposite systems. He spoke with seeming complacency of himself--said he acted by command. The spirit said to him, 'Blake, be an artist and nothing else.' In this there is felicity. His eye glistened while he spoke of the joy of devoting himself solely to divine art. 'Art is inspiration. When Michael Angelo or Raphael or Mr. Flaxman does any of his fine things, he does them in the spirit.' Blake said, 'I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy.'
Among the[3] unintelligible sentiments which he was continually expressing is his distinction between the natural and the spiritual world. The natural world must be consumed. Incidentally _Swedenborg_ was spoken of. He was a divine teacher--he has done much good, and will do much good--he has corrected many errors of Popery, and also of Luther and Calvin. Yet he also said that _Swedenborg_ was wrong in endeavoring to explain to the _rational_ faculty what the reason cannot comprehend: he should have left that. As Blake mentioned _Swedenborg_ and _Dante_ together I wished to know whether he considered their visions of the same kind. As far as I could collect, he does. _Dante_ he said was the greater _poet._ He had _political_ objects. Yet this, though wrong, does not appear in Blake's mind to affect the truth of the vision. Strangely inconsistent with this was the language of Blake about Wordsworth. Wordsworth he thinks is no Christian but a Platonist. He asked me, 'Does he believe in the Scriptures?' On my answering in the affirmative he said he had been much pained by reading the introduction to the Excursion. It brought on a fit of illness. The passage was produced and read:
'Jehovah--with his thunder, and the choir Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones, I _pass_ them unalarmed.'
This _pass them unalarmed_ greatly offended Blake. 'Does Mr. Wordsworth think his mind can _surpass_ Jehovah?' I tried to twist this passage into a sense corresponding with Blake's own theories, but filled [_sic_= failed], and Wordsworth was finally set down as a pagan. But still with great praise as the greatest poet of the age.
Jacob Boehmen was spoken of as a divinely inspired man. Blake praised, too, the figures in Law's translation as being very beautiful. Michael Angelo could not have done better. Though he spoke of his happiness, he spoke of past sufferings, and of sufferings as necessary. 'There is suffering in heaven, for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is the capacity of pain.'
I have been interrupted by a call from Talfourd in writing this account--and I can not now recollect any distinct remarks--but as Blake has invited me to go and see him I shall possibly have an opportunity again of noting what he says, and I may be able hereafter to throw connection, if not system, into what I have written above.
I feel great admiration and respect for him--he is certainly a most amiable man--a good creature--and of his poetical and pictorial genius there is no doubt, I believe, in the minds of judges. Wordsworth and Lamb like his poems, and the Aders his paintings.
A few other detached thoughts occur to me. _Bacon_, _Locke_, and _Newton_ are the three great teachers of Atheism or of Satan's doctrine. Every thing is _Atheism_ which assumes the reality of the natural and unspiritual world. _Irving._ He is a highly gifted man--he is a sent man--but they who are sent sometimes[4] go further than they ought.
_Dante_ saw Devils where I see none. I see only good. I saw nothing but good in _Calvin's_ house--better than in Luther's; he had harlots.
_Swedenborg._ Parts of his scheme are dangerous. His sexual religion is dangerous.
I do not believe that the world is round. I believe it is quite flat. I objected the circumnavigation. We were called to dinner at the moment, and I lost the reply.
The _Sun._ 'I have conversed with the Spiritual Sun--I saw him on Primrose-hill. He said, "Do you take me for the Greek Apollo?" "No," I said, "that," [and Blake pointed to the sky] "that is the Greek Apollo. He is Satan."'
'I know what is true by internal conviction. A doctrine is told me--my heart says it must be true.' I corroborated this by remarking on the impossibility of the unlearned man judging of what are called the _external_ evidences of religion, in which he heartily concurred.
I regret that I have been unable to do more than set down these seeming idle and rambling sentences. The tone and manner are incommunicable. There is a natural sweetness and gentility about Blake which are delightful. And when he is not referring to his Visions he talks sensibly and acutely.
His friend Linnel seems a great admirer.
Perhaps the best thing he said was his comparison of moral with natural evil. 'Who shall say what God thinks evil? That is a wise tale of the Mahometans--of the Angel of the Lord that murdered the infant' [alluding to the Hermit of Parnel, I suppose]. 'Is not every infant that dies of disease in effect murdered by an angel?'
17_th December._ For the sake of connection I will here insert a minute of a short call I this morning made on Blake. He dwells in Fountain Court in the Strand. I found him in a small room, which seems to be both a working-room and a bedroom. Nothing could exceed the squalid air both of the apartment and his dress, but in spite of dirt--I might say filth--an air of natural gentility is diffused over him. And his wife, notwithstanding the same offensive character of her dress and appearance, has a good expression of countenance, so that I shall have a pleasure in calling on and conversing with these worthy people.
But I fear I shall not make any progress in ascertaining his opinions and feelings--that there being really no system or connection in his mind, all his future conversation will be but varieties of wildness and incongruity.
I found [_sic_] at work on Dante. The book (Cary) and his sketches both before him. He shewed me his designs, of which I have nothing to say but that they evince a power of grouping and of throwing grace and interest over conceptions most monstrous and disgusting, which I should not have anticipated.
Our conversation began about Dante. 'He was an "Atheist," a mere politician busied about this world as Milton was, till in his old age he returned back to God whom he had had in his childhood.'
I tried to get out from Blake that he meant this charge only in a higher sense, and not using the word Atheism in its popular meaning. But he would not allow this. Though when he in like manner charged Locke with Atheism and I remarked that Locke wrote on the evidences of piety and lived a virtuous life, he had nothing to reply to me nor reiterated the charge of willful deception. I admitted that Locke's doctrine leads to Atheism, and this seemed to satisfy him. From this subject we passed over to that of good and evil, in which he repeated his former assertions more decidedly. He allowed, indeed, that there is error, mistake, etc., and if these be evil--then there is evil, but these are only negations. Nor would he admit that any education should be attempted except that of cultivation of the imagination and fine arts. 'What are called the vices in the natural world are the highest sublimities in the spiritual world.' When I asked whether if he had been a father he would not have grieved if his child had become vicious or a great criminal, he answered, 'I must not regard when I am endeavoring to think rightly my own any more than other people's weaknesses.' And when I again remarked that this doctrine puts an end to all exertion or even wish to change anything, he had no reply. We spoke of the Devil, and I observed that when a child I thought the Manichaean doctrine or that of the two principles a rational one. He assented to this, and in confirmation asserted that he did not believe in the _omnipotence_ of God. 'The language of the Bible on that subject is only poetical or allegorical.' Yet soon after he denied that the natural world is anything. 'It is all nothing, and Satan's empire is the empire of nothing.'
He reverted soon to his favorite expression, my Visions. 'I saw Milton in imagination, and he told me to beware of being misled by his Paradise Lost. In particular he wished me to show the falsehood of his doctrine that the pleasures of _sex_ arose from the fall. The fall could not produce any pleasure.' I answered, the fall produced a state of _evil_ in which there was a mixture of good or pleasure. And in that sense the fall may be said to produce the pleasure. But he replied that the fall produced only generation and death. And then he went off upon a rambling state of a union of sexes in man as in Ovid, an androgynous state, in which I could not follow him.
As he spoke of Miltons appearing to him, I asked whether he resembled the prints of him. He answered, 'All.' Of what age did he appear to be? 'Various ages--sometimes a very old man.' He spoke of Milton as being at one time a sort of classical Atheist, and of Dante as being now with God.
Of the faculty of Vision, he spoke as one he has had from early infancy. He thinks all men partake of it, but it is lost by not being cultivated. And he eagerly assented to a remark I made, that all men have all faculties to a greater or less degree. I am to renew my visits, and to read Wordsworth to him, of whom he seems to entertain a high idea.
[Here B. has added _vide_ p. 174, _i.e._ Dec. 24, below.]
_Sunday_ 11_th._ The greater part of the forenoon was spent in writing the preceding account of my interview with Blake in which I was interrupted by a call from Talfourd....
17_th._ Made a visit to Blake of which I have written fully in a preceding page.
20_th_... Hundleby took coffee with me _tête à tête._ We talked of his personal concerns, of Wordsworth, whom I can't make him properly enjoy; of Blake, whose peculiarities he can as little relish....
_Saturday_ 24_th._ A call on _Blake._ My third interview. I read him Wordsworth's incomparable ode, which he heartily enjoyed. The same half crazy crotchets about the two worlds--the eternal repetition of what must in time become tiresome. Again he repeated to day, 'I fear Wordsworth loves Nature--and Nature is the work of the Devil. The Devil is in us, as far as we are Nature.' On my enquiring whether the Devil would not be destroyed by God as being of less power, he denied that God has any power--asserted that the Devil is eternally created not by God, but by God's permission. And when I objected that permission implies power to prevent, he did not seem to understand me. It was remarked that the parts of Wordworth's ode which he most enjoyed were the most obscure and those I the least like and comprehend....
_January_ 1826
6_th._ A call on Blake. I hardly feel it worth while to write down his conversation, it is so much a repetition of his former talk. He was very cordial to-day. I had procured him two subscriptions for his Job from Geo. Procter and Bas. Montague. I paid £1 on each. This, probably, put him in spirits, more than he was aware of--he spoke of his being richer than ever on having learned to know me, and he told Mrs. A. he and I were nearly of an opinion. Yet I have practized no deception intentionally, unless silence be so. He renewed his complaints, blended with his admiration of Wordsworth. The oddest thing he said was that he had been commanded to do certain things, that is, to write about Milton, and that he was applauded for refusing--he struggled with the Angels and was victor. His wife joined in the conversation....
8_th._ ... Then took tea with Basil Montague, Mrs. M. there. A short chat about Coleridge, Irving, etc. She admires Blake_--Encore une excellence là de plus._...
_February_
18_th._ Jos. Wedd breakfasted with me. Then called on _Blake._ An amusing chat with him, but still no novelty. The same round of extravagant and mad doctrines, which I shall not now repeat, but merely notice their application.
He gave me, copied out by himself, Wordsworth's preface to his Excursion. At the end he has added this note:--
'Solomon, when he married Pharaoh's daughter, became a convert to the Heathen Mythology, talked exactly in this way of Jehovah as a very inferior object of man's contemplations; he also passed him by unalarmed, and was permitted. Jehovah dropped a tear and followed him by his Spirit into the abstract void. It is called the divine Mercy. Satan dwells in it, but mercy does not dwell in him.'
Of Wordsworth he talked as before. Some of his writings proceed from the Holy Ghost, but then others are the work of the Devil. However, I found on this subject Blake's language more in conformity with Orthodox Christianity than before. He talked of the being under the direction of _Self_; and of _Reason_ as the creature of man and opposed to God's grace. And warmly declared that all he knew was in the Bible, but then he understands by the Bible the spiritual sense. For as to the natural sense, that Voltaire was commissioned by God to expose. 'I have had much intercourse with Voltaire, and he said to me I blasphemed the Son of Man, and it shall be forgiven me. But they (the enemies of Voltaire) blasphemed the Holy Ghost in me, and it shall not be forgiven them.' I asked in what language Voltaire spoke--he gave an ingenious answer. 'To my sensation it was English. It was like the touch of a musical key. He touched it probably French, but to my ear it became English.' I spoke again of the _form_ of the persons who appear to him. Asked why he did not _draw_ them, 'It is not worth while. There are so many, the labour would be too great. Besides there would be no use. As to Shakespeare, he is exactly like the _old_ engraving--which is called a bad one. I think it very good.'
I enquired about his writings. 'I have written more than Voltaire or Rousseau--six or seven epic poems as long as Homer, and 20 tragedies as long as Macbeth.' He showed me his Vision (for so it may be called) of Genesis--'as understood by a Christian Visionary,' in which in a style resembling the Bible the spirit is given. He read a passage at random. It was striking. He will not print any more.[5] 'I write,' he says, 'when commanded by the spirits, and the moment I have written I see the words fly about the room in all directions. It is then published, and the spirits can read. My MSS. of no further use. I have been tempted to burn my MSS., but my wife won't let me.' She is right, said I--and you have written these, not from yourself, but by a higher order. The MSS. are theirs and your property. You cannot tell what purpose they may answer--unforeseen to you. He liked this, and said he would not destroy them. His philosophy he repeated--denying causation, asserting everything to be the work of God or the Devil--that there is a constant falling off from God--angels becoming devils. Every man has a devil in him, and the conflict is eternal between a man's self and God, etc. etc. etc. He told me my copy of his songs would be 5 guineas, and was pleased by my manner of receiving this information. He spoke of his horror of money--of his turning pale when money had been offered him, etc. etc. etc.
_May_
_Thursday_ 11_th._ Calls this morning on Blake, on Thornton [etc.] ...
12_th._ ... Tea and supper at home. The Flaxmans, Masqueriers (a Miss Forbes), Blake, and Sutton Sharpe.
On the whole the evening went off tolerably. Masquerier not precisely the man to enjoy Blake, who was, however, not in an _exalted_ state. Allusions only to his particular notions while Masquerier commented on his opinions as if they were those of a man of ordinary notions. Blake asserted that the oldest painter poets were the best. Do you deny all progression? says Masquerier. 'Oh yes!' I doubt whether Flaxman sufficiently tolerates Blake. But Blake appreciates Flaxman as he ought. Blake relished my Stone drawings. They staid till eleven.
Blake is more and more convinced that Wordsworth worships _nature_ and is not a Bible Christian. I have sent him the Sketches. We shall see whether they convert him.
_June_
13_th._ Another idle day. Called early on Blake. He was as wild as ever, with no great novelty, except that he confessed a _practical_ notion which would do him more injury than any other I have heard from him. He says that from the Bible he has learned that _eine Gemeinschaft der Frauen statt finden sollte._ When I objected that _Ehestand_ seems to be a divine institution, he referred to the Bible--'that from the beginning it was not so.' He talked as usual of the spirits, asserted that he had committed many murders, that reason is the only evil or sin, and that careless, gay people are better than those who think, etc. etc. etc.
_December_
_Thursday_ 7_th._ I sent Britt, to enquire after Mr. Flaxman's health, etc., and was engaged looking over the Term Reports while he was gone. On his return, he brought the melancholy intelligence of his death early in the morning!!! The country has lost one of its greatest and best of men. As an artist he has spread the fame of the country beyond any others of his age. As a man he exhibited a rare specimen of Christian and moral excellence.
I walked out and called at Mr. Soane's. He was from home. I then called on Blake, desirous to see how, with his peculiar feelings and opinions, he would receive the intelligence. It was much as I expected--he had himself been very ill during the summer, and his first observation was with a smile--'I thought I should have gone first.' He then said, 'I cannot consider death as anything but[6] a removing from one room to another.' One thing led to another, and he fell into his wild rambling way of talk. 'Men are born with a devil and an angel,' but this he himself interpreted body and soul. Of the Old Testament he seemed to think not favorably. 'Christ,' said he, 'took much after his mother (the law), and in that respect was one of the worst of men.' On my requiring an explanation, he said, 'There was his turning the money changers out of the Temple. He had no right to do that.' Blake then declared against those who sat in judgement on others. 'I have never known a very bad man who had not something very good about him.' He spoke of the Atonement. Said, 'It is a horrible doctrine. If another man pay your debt, I do not forgive it,' etc. etc. etc. He produced _Sintram_ by Fouqué--'This is better than my things.'
1827
_February_
_Friday_, 2_nd._ Götzenberger, the young painter from Germany, called on me, and I accompanied him to Blake. We looked over Blake's Dante. Götzenberger seemed highly gratified by the designs, and Mrs. Aders says Götzenberger considers Blake, as the first and Flaxman as the second man he had seen in England. The conversation was slight--I was interpreter between them. And nothing remarkable was said by Blake--he was interested apparently by Götzenberger....
1828
_January_
8_th._ Breakfasted with Shott--Talfourd and B. Field there. Walked with Field to Mrs. Blake. The poor old lady was more affected than I expected, yet she spoke of her husband as dying like an angel. She is the housekeeper of Linnell the painter and engraver, and at present her services might well pay for her hoard. A few of her husband's works are all her property. We found that the Job is Linnell's property, and the print of Chaucer's pilgrimage hers. Therefore Field bought a proof and I two prints at 2 1/2 guineas each. I mean one for Lamb. Mrs. Blake is to look out some engravings for me hereafter....
[Footnote 1: 'Any' crossed out.]
[Footnote 2: 'By which evil' crossed out.]
[Footnote 3: 'More remarkable' crossed out.]
[Footnote 4: 'Exceed their commission' crossed out.]
[Footnote 5: 'For the writer' crossed out.]
[Footnote 6: 'A passage from' crossed out.]
(2) FROM A LETTER OF CRABB ROBINSON TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
In a letter to Dorothy Wordsworth, not dated, but bearing the postmark of February 20, 1826, there is the following reference to Blake. No earlier reference to him occurs in the letter, in spite of the sentence which follows:--
'I have above mentioned _Blake._ I forget whether I ever mentioned to you this very interesting man, with whom I am now become acquainted. Were the "Memorials" at my hand, I should quote a fine passage in the Sonnet on the Cologne Cathedral as applicable to the contemplation of this singular being.'
'I gave your brother some poems in MS. by him, and they interested him--as well they might, for there is an affinity between them, as there is between the regulated imagination of a wise poet and the incoherent dreams of a poet. Blake is an engraver by trade, a painter and a poet also, whose works have been subject of derision to men in general; but he has a few admirers, and some of eminence have eulogized his designs. He has lived in obscurity and poverty, to which the constant hallucinations in which he lives have doomed him. I do not mean to give you a detailed account of him. A few words will suffice to inform you of what class he is. He is not so much a disciple of Jacob Böhmen and Swedenborg as a fellow Visionary. He lives, as they did, in a world of his own, enjoying constant intercourse with the world of spirits. He receives visits from Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Voltaire, etc. etc. etc., and has given me repeatedly their very words in their conversations. His paintings are copies of what he saw in his Visions. His books (and his MSS. are immense in quantity) are dictations from the spirits. He told me yesterday that when he writes it is for the spirits only; he sees the words fly about the room the moment he has put them on paper, and his book is then published. A man so favoured, of course, has sources of wisdom and truth peculiar to himself. I will not pretend to give you an account of his religious and philosophical opinions. They are a strange compound of Christianity, Spinozism, and Platonism. I must confine myself to what he has said about your brother's works, and[1] I fear this may lead me far enough to fatigue you in following me. After what I have said, Mr. W. will not be flattered by knowing that Blake deems him the _only poet_ of the age, nor much alarmed by hearing that, like Muley Moloch, Blake thinks that he is often in his works an _Atheist._ Now, according to Blake, Atheism consists in worshipping the natural world, which same natural world, properly speaking, is nothing real, but a mere illusion produced by Satan. Milton was for a great part of his life an Atheist, and therefore has fatal errors in his Paradise Lost, which he has often begged Blake to confute. Dante (though now with God) lived and died an Atheist. He was the slave of the world and time. But Dante and Wordsworth, in spite of their Atheism, were inspired by the Holy Ghost. Indeed, all real poetry is the work of the Holy Ghost, and Wordsworth's poems (a large proportion, at least) are the work of divine inspiration. Unhappily he is left by God to his own illusions, and then the Atheism is apparent. I had the pleasure of reading to Blake in my best style (and you know I am vain on that point, and think I read W.'s poems particularly well) the Ode on Immortality. I never witnessed greater delight in any listener; and in general Blake loves the poems. What appears to have disturbed his mind, on the other hand, is the Preface to the Excursion. He told me six months ago that it caused him a bowel complaint which nearly killed him. I have in his hand a copy of the extract [with the][2] following note at the end: "Solomon, when he married Pharaoh's daughter and became a convert to the Heathen Mythology, talked exactly in this way of Jehovah as a very inferior object of man's contemplation; he also passed him by unalarmed, and was permitted. Jehovah dropped a tear, and followed him by his Spirit into the abstract void. It is called the divine mercy. Satan dwells in it, but Mercy does not dwell in him, he knows not to forgive." When I first saw Blake at Mrs. Aders's he very earnestly asked me, "Is Mr. W. a sincere real Christian?" In reply to my answer he said, "If so, what does he mean by 'the worlds to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil,' and who is he that shall 'pass Jehovah unalarmed'?" It is since then that I have lent Blake all the works which he but imperfectly knew. I doubt whether what I have written will excite your and Mr. W.'s curiosity; but there is something so delightful about the man--though in great poverty, he is so perfect a gentleman, with such genuine dignity and independence, scorning presents, and of such native delicacy in words, etc. etc. etc., that I have not scrupled promising introducing him and Mr. W. together. He expressed his thanks strongly, saying, "You do me honor, Mr. W. is a great man. Besides, he may convince me I am wrong about him. I have been wrong before now," etc. Coleridge has visited Blake, and, I am told, talks finely about him. That I might not encroach on a third sheet I have compressed what I had to say about Blake. You must _see_ him one of these days and he will interest you at all events, whatever character you give to his mind.'
The main part of the letter is concerned with Wordsworth's arrangement of his poems, which Crabb Robinson says that he agrees with Lamb in disliking. He then says: 'It is a sort of intellectual suicide in your brother not to have continued his admirable series of poems "dedicated to liberty," he might add, "and public virtue." I assure you it gives me real pain when I think that some future commentator may possibly hereafter write, "This great poet survived to the fifth decenary of the nineteenth century, but he appears to have dyed in the year 1814 as far as life consisted in an active sympathy with the temporary welfare of his fellow-creatures...."
[More follows, and then] 'I had no intention, I assure you, to make so long a parenthesis or indeed to advert to such a subject. And I wish you not to read any part of this letter which might be thought impertinent.... In favor of my affectionate attachment to your brother's fame, do forgive me this digression, and, as I said above, keep it to yourself.'
[At the end he says] 'My best remembrances to Mr. W. And recollect again that you are not to read _all_ this letter to any one if it will offend, and you are yourself to forgive it as coming from one who is affly your friend,
H. C. R.'
On April 6, Wordsworth answers the letter from Rydal Mount, saying: 'My sister had taken flight for Herefordshire when your letter, for such we guessed it to be, arrived--it was broken open--(pray forgive the offense) and your charges of concealment and reserve frustrated. We are all, at all times, so glad to hear from you that we could not resist the temptation to purchase the pleasure at the expense of the peccadillo, for which we beg pardon with united voices. You are kind enough to mention my poems.'
[All the rest of the letter is taken up with them, and it ends, with no mention of Blake] 'I can write no more. T. Clarkson is going. Your supposed Biography entertained me much. I could give you the other side. Farewell.'
[There is no signature.]
[Footnote 1: 'And as I am requested to copy what he has written for the purpose' crossed out.]
[Footnote 2: The MS. is here torn.]
(3) FROM CRABB ROBINSON'S REMINISCENCES
1810
I was amusing myself this spring by writing an account of the insane poet, painter, and engraver, _Blake._ Perthes of Hamburg had written to me asking me to send him an article for a new German magazine, entitled Vaterländische Annalen, which he was about to set up, and Dr. _Malkin_ having in his Memoirs of his son given an account of this extraordinary genius with specimens of his poems, I resolved out of these to compile a paper. And this I did,[1] and the paper was translated by Dr. Julius, who, many years afterwards, introduced himself to me as my translator. It appears in the single number of the second volume of the Vaterländische Annalen. For it was at this time that Buonaparte united Hamburg to the French Empire, on which Perthes manfully gave up the magazine, saying, as he had no longer a Vaterland, there could be no Vaterländische Annalen. But before I drew up the paper, I went to see a gallery of Blake's paintings, which were exhibited by his brother, a hosier in Carnaby Market. The entrance was 2s. 6d., catalogue included. I was deeply interested by the catalogue as well as the pictures. I took 4--telling the brother I hoped he would let me come in again. He said, 'Oh! as often as you please.' I dare say such a thing had never happened before or did afterwards. I afterwards became acquainted with Blake, and will postpone till hereafter what I have to say of this extraordinary character, whose life has since been written very inadequately by Allan Cunningham in his _Lives of the English Artists._
[At the side is written]--_N. B_. What I have written about Blake will appear at the end of the year 1825.
1825
WILLIAM BLAKE
19/02/52
It was at the latter end of the year 1825 that I put in writing my recollections of this most remarkable man. The larger portions are under the date of the 18th of December. He died in the year 1827. I have therefore now revised what I wrote on the 10th of December and afterwards, and without any attempt to reduce to order, or make consistent the wild and strange rhapsodies uttered by this insane man of genius, thinking it better to put down what I find as it occurs, though I am aware of the objection that may justly be made to the recording the ravings of insanity in which it may be said there can be found no principle, as there is no ascertainable law of mental association which is obeyed; and from which therefore nothing can be learned.
This would be perfectly true of _mere_ madness--but does not apply to that form of insanity ordinarily called monomania, and may be disregarded in a case like the present in which the subject of the remark was unquestionably what a German would call a _Verunglückter Genie_, whose theosophic dreams bear a close resemblance to those of _Swedenborg_--whose genius as an artist was praised by no less men than _Flaxman_ and _Fuseli_--and whose poems were thought worthy republication by the biographer of _Swedenborg_ (_Wilkinson_), and of which Wordsworth said after reading a number--they were the 'Songs of Innocence and Experience showing the two opposite sides of the human soul'--'There is no doubt this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott!' The German painter _Götzenberger_ (a man indeed who ought not to be named _after the others_ as an authority for my writing about Blake) said, on his returning to Germany about the time at which I am now arrived, 'I saw in England many men of talents, but only three men of genius, Coleridge, Flaxman, and Blake, and of these Blake was the greatest.' I do not mean to intimate my assent to this opinion, nor to do more than supply such materials as my intercourse with him furnish to an uncritical narrative to which I shall confine myself. I have written a few sentences in these reminiscences already, those of the year 1810. I had not then begun the regular journal which I afterwards kept. I will therefore go over the ground again and introduce these recollections of 1825 by a reference to the slight knowledge I had of him before, and what occasioned my taking an interest in him, not caring to repeat what Cunningham has recorded of him in the volume of his _Lives of the British Painters_, etc. etc., except thus much. It appears that he was born...
[The page ends here.]
_Dr. Malkin_, our Bury Grammar School Headmaster, published in the year 1806 a Memoir of a very precocious child who died... years old, and he prefixed to the Memoir an account of Blake, and in the volume he gave an account of Blake as a painter and poet, and printed some specimens of his poems, viz. 'The Tyger,' and ballads and mystical lyrical poems, all of a wild character, and M. gave an account of Visions which Blake related to his acquaintance. I knew that Flaxman thought highly of him, and though he did not venture to extol him as a genuine seer, yet he did not join in the ordinary derision of him as a madman. Without having seen him, yet I had already conceived a high opinion of him, and thought he would furnish matter for a paper interesting to Germans, and therefore when _Fred. Perthes_, the patriotic publisher at Hamburg, wrote to me in 1810 requesting me to give him an article for his Patriotische Annalen, I thought I could do no better than send him a paper on Blake, which was translated into German by _Dr. Julius_, filling, with a few small poems copied and translated, 24 pages. These appeared in the first and last No. of volume 2 of the Annals. The high-minded editor boldly declared that as the Emperor of France had annexed Hamburg to France he had no longer a country, and there could no longer be any patriotical Annals!!! Perthes' Life has been written since, which I have riot seen. I am told there is in it a civil mention of me. This _Dr. Julius_ introduced himself to me as such translator a few years ago. He travelled as an Inspector of Prisons for the Prussian Government into the United States of America. In order to enable me to write this paper, which, by the bye, has nothing in it of the least value, I went to see an exhibition of Blake's original paintings in Carnaby Market, at a hosier's, Blake's brother. These paintings filled several rooms of an ordinary dwelling-house, and for the sight a half-crown was demanded of the visitor, for which he had a catalogue. This catalogue I possess, and it is a very curious exposure of the state of the artist's mind. I wished to send it to Germany and to give a copy to Lamb and others, so I took four, and giving 10s., bargained that I should be at liberty to go again. 'Free! as long as you live,'[2] said the brother, astonished at such a liberality, which he had never experienced before, nor I dare say did afterwards. _Lamb_ was delighted with the catalogue, especially with the description of a painting afterwards engraved, and connected with which is an anecdote that, unexplained, would reflect discredit on a most amiable and excellent man, but which Flaxman considered to have been not the willful act of _Stodart_. It was after the friends of Blake had circulated a subscription paper for an engraving of his _Canterbury Pilgrims_, that _Stodart_ was made a party to an engraving of a painting of the same subject by himself. Stodart's work is well known, Blake's is known by very few. Lamb preferred it greatly to Stodart's, and declared that Blake's description was the finest criticism he had ever read of Chaucer's poem.
In this catalogue Blake writes of himself in the most outrageous language--says, 'This artist defies all competition in colouring'--that none can beat him, for none can beat the Holy Ghost--that he and Raphael and Michael Angelo were under divine influence--while Corregio and Titian worshipped a lascivious and therefore cruel deity--Reubens a proud devil, etc. etc. He declared, speaking of color, Titian's men to be of leather and his women of chalk, and ascribed his own perfection in coloring to the advantage he enjoyed in seeing daily the primitive men walking in their native nakedness in the mountains of Wales. There were about thirty oil-paintings, the coloring excessively dark and high, the veins black, and the color of the primitive men very like that of the Red Indians. In his estimation they would probably be the primitive men. Many of his designs were unconscious imitations. This appears also in his published works--the designs of _Blair's Grave_, which Fuseli and Schiavonetti highly extolled--and in his designs to illustrate _Job_, published after his death for the benefit of his widow.
23/2/52.
To this catalogue and in the printed poems, the small pamphlet which appeared in 1783, the edition put forth by Wilkinson of The Songs of Innocence,' and other works already mentioned, to which I have to add the first four books of Young's Night Thoughts, and Allan Cunningham's Life of him, I now refer, and will confine myself to the memorandums I took of his conversation. I had heard of him from Flaxman, and for the first time dined in his company at the Aders'. _Linnell_ the painter also was there--an artist of considerable talent, and who professed to take[3] a deep interest in Blake and his work, whether of a perfectly disinterested character may be doubtful, as will appear hereafter. This was on the 10th of December.
I was aware of his idiosyncrasies and therefore to a great degree prepared for the sort of conversation which took place at and after dinner, an altogether unmethodical rhapsody on art, poetry, and religion--he saying the most strange things in the most unemphatic manner, speaking of his _Visions_ as any man would of the most ordinary occurrence. He was then 68 years of age. He had a broad, pale face, a large full eye with a benignant expression--at the same time a look of languor,[4] except when excited, and then he had an air of inspiration. But not such as without a previous acquaintance with him, or attending to _what_ he said, would suggest the notion that he was insane. There was nothing _wild_ about his look, and though very ready to be drawn out to the assertion of his favorite ideas, yet with no warmth as if he wanted to make proselytes. Indeed one of the peculiar features of his scheme, as far as it was consistent, was indifference and a very extraordinary degree of tolerance and satisfaction with what had taken place.[5] A sort of pious and humble optimism, not the scornful optimism of Candide. But at the same time that he was very ready to praise he seemed incapable of envy, as he was of discontent. He warmly praised some composition of Mrs. Aders, and having brought for Aders an engraving of his Canterbury Pilgrims, he remarked that one of the figures resembled a figure in one of the works then in Aders's room, so that he had been accused of having stolen from it. But he added that he had drawn the figure in question 20 years before he had seen the _original_ picture. However, there is 'no wonder in the resemblance, as in my youth I was always studying that class of painting.' I have forgotten what it was, but his taste was in close conformity with the old German school.
This was somewhat at variance with what he said both this day and afterwards--implying that he copies his Visions. And it was on this first day that, in answer to a question from me, he said, '_The Spirits told me._' This lead me to say: Socrates used pretty much the same language. He spoke of his Genius. Now, what affinity or resemblance do you suppose was there between the _Genius_ which inspired Socrates and your _Spirits?_ He smiled, and for once it seemed to me as if he had a feeling of vanity gratified.[6] 'The same as in our countenances.' He paused and said, 'I was Socrates'--and then as if he had gone too far in that--'or a sort of brother. I must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them.' As I had for many years been familiar with the idea that an eternity _a parte post_ was inconceivable without an eternity _a parte ante_, I was naturally led to express that thought on this occasion. His eye brightened on my saying this. He eagerly assented: 'To be sure. We are all coexistent with God; members of the Divine body, and partakers of the Divine nature.' Blake's having adopted this Platonic idea led me on our _tête-à-tête_ walk home at night to put the popular question to him, concerning the imputed Divinity of Jesus Christ. He answered: 'He is the only God'--but then he added--'And so am I and so are you.' He had before said--and that led me to put the question--that Christ ought not to have suffered himself to be crucified.' 'He should not have attacked the Government. He had no business with such matters.' On my representing this to be inconsistent with the sanctity of divine qualities, he said Christ was not yet become the Father. It is hard on bringing together these fragmentary recollections[7] to fix Blake's position in relation to Christianity, Platonism, and Spinozism.
It is one of the subtle remarks of _Hume_ on the tendency of certain religious notions to reconcile us to whatever occurs, as God's will. And apply--this to something Blake said, and drawing the inference that there is no use in education, he hastily rejoined: 'There _is_ no use in education. I hold it wrong. It is the great Sin. It is eating of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. That was the fault of Plato: he knew of nothing but the Virtues and Vices. There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes.' On my asking whether there is nothing absolutely evil in what man does, he answered: 'I am no judge of that--perhaps not in God's eyes.' Notwithstanding this, he, however, at the same time spoke of error as being in heaven; for on my asking whether Dante was pure in writing his _Vision_, 'Pure,' said Blake. 'Is there any purity in God's eyes? No. "He chargeth his angels with folly.'" He even extended this liability to error to the Supreme Being. 'Did he not repent him that he had made Nineveh?' My journal here has the remark that it is easier to retail his personal remarks than to reconcile those which seemed to be in conformity with the most opposed abstract systems. He spoke with seeming complacency of his own life in connection with Art. In becoming an artist he 'acted by command.' The Spirits said to him, 'Blake, be an artist.' His eye glistened while he spoke of the joy of devoting himself to _divine art_ alone. 'Art is inspiration. When Michael Angelo or Raphael, in their day, or Mr. Flaxman, does any of his fine things, he does them in the Spirit.' Of fame he said: 'I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I want nothing--I am quite happy.' This was confirmed to me on my subsequent interviews with him. His distinction between the Natural and Spiritual worlds was very confused. Incidentally, Swedenborg was mentioned--he declared him to be a Divine Teacher. He had done, and would do, much good. Yet he did wrong in endeavoring to explain to the _reason_ what it could not comprehend. He seemed to consider, but that was not clear, the visions of Swedenborg and Dante as of the same kind. Dante was the greater poet. He too was wrong in occupying his mind about political objects. Yet this did not appear to affect his estimation of Dante's genius, or his opinion of the truth of Dante's visions. Indeed, when he even declared Dante to be an Atheist, it was accompanied by expression of the highest admiration; though, said he, Dante saw Devils where I saw none.[8]
I put down in my journal the following insulated remarks. _Jacob Böhmen_ was placed among the divinely inspired men. He praised also the designs to Law's translation of Böhmen. Michael Angelo could not have surpassed them.
'_Bacon, Locke_, and _Newton_ are the three great teachers of Atheism, or Satan's Doctrine,' he asserted.
'_Irving_ is a highly gifted man--he is a _sent_ man; but they who are sent sometimes go further than they ought.'[9]
_Calvin_. I saw nothing but good in _Calvin's_ house. In _Luther's_ there were _Harlots._ He declared his opinion that the earth is flat, not round, and just as I had objected the circumnavigation dinner was announced. But objections were seldom of any use. The wildest of his assertions was made with the veriest indifference of tone,[10] as if altogether insignificant. It respected the natural and spiritual worlds. By way of example of the difference between them, he said, '_You_ never saw the spiritual Sun. I have. I saw him on Primrose Hill.' He said, 'Do you take me for the Greek Apollo?' 'No!' I said. '_That_ (pointing to the sky) that is the Greek Apollo. He is Satan.'
Not everything was thus absurd. There were glimpses and flashes of truth and beauty: as when he compared moral with physical evil. 'Who shall say what God thinks evil? That is a wise tale of the Mahometans--of the Angel of the Lord who murdered the Infant.'--The Hermit of Parnell, I suppose.--'Is not every infant that dies of a natural death in reality slain by an Angel?'
And when he joined to the assurance of his happiness, that of his having suffered, and that it was necessary, he added, 'There is suffering in Heaven; for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is the capacity of pain.[11]
I include among the glimpses of truth this assertion, 'I know what is true by internal conviction. A doctrine is stated. My heart tells me It _must_ be true.' I remarked, in confirmation of it, that, to an unlearned man, what are called the _external_ evidences of religion can carry no conviction with them; and this he assented to.
After my first evening with him at Aders's, I made the remark in my journal, that his observations, apart from his Visions and references to the spiritual world, were sensible and acute. In the sweetness of his countenance and gentility of his manner he added an indescribable grace to his conversation. I added my regret, which I must now repeat, at my inability to give more than incoherent thoughts. Not altogether my fault perhaps.
25/2/52.
On the 17th I called on him in his house in Fountain's Court in the Strand. The interview was a short one, and what I saw was more remarkable than what I heard. He was at work engraving in a small bedroom, light, and looking out on a mean yard. Everything in the room squalid and indicating poverty, except himself. And there was a natural gentility about him, and an insensibility to the seeming poverty, which quite removed the impression. Besides, his linen was clean, his hand white, and his air quite unembarrassed when he begged me to sit down as if he were in a palace. There was but one chair in the room besides that on which he sat. On my putting my hand to it, I found that it would have fallen to pieces if I had lifted it, so, as if I had been a Sybarite, I said with a smile, 'Will you let me indulge myself?' and I sat on the bed, and near him,[12] and during my short stay there was nothing in him that betrayed that he was aware of what to other persons might have been even offensive, not in his person, but in all about him.
His wife I saw at this time, and she seemed to be the very woman to make him happy. She had been formed by him. Indeed, otherwise, she could not have lived with him. Notwithstanding her dress, which was poor and dirty, she had a good expression in her countenance, and, with a dark eye, had remains[13] of beauty in her youth. She had that virtue of virtues in a wife, an implicit reverence of her husband. It is quite certain that she believed in all his visions. And on one occasion, not this day, speaking of his Visions, she said, 'You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old, and he put his head to the window and set you a-screaming.' In a word, she was formed on the Miltonic model, and like the first Wife Eve worshipped God in her husband. He being to her what God was to him. Vide Milton's Paradise Lost--_passim_.
26/2/52.
He was making designs or engravings, I forget which. Carey's Dante was before [_sic._] He showed me some of his designs from Dante, of which I do not presume to speak. They were too much above me. But Götzenberger, whom I afterwards took to see them, expressed the highest admiration of them. They are in the hands of _Linnell_ the painter, and, it has been suggested, are reserved by him for publication when Blake may have become[14] an object of interest to a greater number than he could be at this age. _Dante_ was again the subject of our conversation. And Blake declared him a mere politician and atheist, busied about this world's affairs; as Milton was till, in his (M.'s) old age, he returned back to the God he had abandoned in childhood.[15] I in vain endeavoured to obtain from him a qualification of the term atheist, so as not to include him in the ordinary reproach. And yet he afterwards spoke of Dante's being _then_ with God. I was more successful when he also called Locke an atheist, and imputed to him willful deception, and seemed satisfied with my admission, that Locke's philosophy led to the Atheism of the French school. He reiterated his former strange notions on morals--would allow of no other education than what lies in the cultivation of the fine arts and the imagination. 'What are called the Vices in the natural world, are the highest sublimities in the spiritual world.' And when I supposed the case of his being the father of a vicious son and asked him how he would feel, he evaded the question by saying that in trying to think correctly he must not regard his own weaknesses any more than other people's. And he was silent to the observation that his doctrine denied evil. He seemed not unwilling to admit the Manichaean doctrine of two principles, as far as it is found in the idea of the Devil. And said expressly said [_sic_] he did not believe in the omnipotence of God. The language of the Bible is only poetical or allegorical on the subject, yet he at the same time denied the _reality_ of the natural world. Satan's empire is the empire of nothing.
As he spoke of frequently seeing Milton, I ventured to ask, half ashamed at the time, which of the three or four portraits in _Hollis's_ Memoirs (vols. in 4to) is the most like. He answered, 'They are all like, at different ages. I have seen him as a youth and as an old man with a long flowing beard. He came lately as an old man--he said he came to ask a favor of me. He said he had committed an error in his Paradise Lost, which he wanted me to correct, in a poem or picture; but I declined. I said I had my own duties to perform.' It is a presumptuous question, I replied--might I venture to ask--what that could be. 'He wished me to expose the falsehood of his doctrine, taught in the Paradise Lost, that[16] sexual intercourse arose out of the Fall. How that cannot be, for no good can spring out of evil.' But, I replied, if the consequence were evil, mixed with good, then the good might be ascribed to the common cause. To this he answered by a reference to the _androgynous_ state, in which I could not possibly follow him. At the time that he asserted his own possession of this gift of Vision, he did not boast of it as peculiar to himself; all men might have it if they would.
1826
27/2/52.
On the 24th I called a second time on him. And on this occasion it was that I read to him _Wordsworth's Ode_ on the supposed pre-existent State, and the subject of Wordsworth's religious character was discussed when we met on the 18th of Feb., and the 12th of May. I will here bring together Blake's declarations concerning Wordsworth, and set down his marginalia in the 8vo. edit. A.D. 1815, vol. I. I had been in the habit, when reading this marvelous Ode to friends, to omit one or two passages, especially that beginning:
'But there's a Tree, of many one,'
Lest I should be rendered ridiculous, being unable to explain precisely _what_ I admired. Not that I acknowledged this to be a fair test. But with Blake I could fear nothing of the kind. And it was this very stanza which threw him almost into a hysterical rapture. His delight in Wordsworth's poetry was intense.[17] Nor did it seem less, notwithstanding the reproaches he continually cast on Wordsworth for his imputed worship of nature;[18] which in the mind of Blake constituted Atheism [see "Introduction."].
28/2/52.
The combination of the wannest praise with imputations which from another would assume the most serious character, and the liberty he took to interpret as he pleased, rendered it as difficult to be offended as to reason with him. The eloquent descriptions of Nature in Wordsworth's poems were conclusive proofs of atheism, for whoever believes in Nature, said Blake, disbelieves in God. For Nature is the work of the Devil. On my obtaining from him the declaration that the Bible was the Word of God, I referred to the commencement of Genesis--In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. But I gained nothing by this, for I was triumphantly told that this God was not Jehovah, but the Elohim; and the doctrine of the Gnostics repeated with sufficient consistency to silence one so unlearned as myself.
The Preface to the Excursion, especially the verses quoted from book i. of the Recluse, so troubled him as to bring on a fit of illness. These lines he singled out:
Jehovah with his thunder, and the Choir Of shouting Angels, and the Empyreal throne, I pass them unalarmed.'
Does Mr. Wordsworth think he can surpass Jehovah? There was a copy of the whole passage in his own hand,[19] in the volume of Wordsworth's poems sent to my chambers after his death. There was this note at the end: 'Solomon, when he married Pharaoh's daughter, and became a convert to the Heathen Mythology, talked exactly in this way of Jehovah, as a very inferior object of Man's contemplations; he also passed him unharmed, and was permitted. Jehovah dropped a tear and followed him by his Spirit into the abstract void. It is called the Divine Mercy. Sarah dwells in it, but Mercy does not dwell in Him.'
Some of Wordsworth's poems he maintained were from the Holy Ghost, others from the Devil. I lent him the 8vo edition, two vols., of Wordsworth's poems, which he had in his possession at the time of his death. They were sent me then. I did not recognize the pencil notes he made in them to be his for some time, and was on the point of rubbing them out under that impression, when I made the discovery.
The following are found in the 3rd vol., in the fly-leaf under the words: Poems referring to the Period of Childhood.
29/2/52.
'I see in Wordsworth the Natural man rising up against the Spiritual man continually, and then he is no poet, but a Heathen Philosopher at Enmity against all true poetry or inspiration.'
Under the first poem:
'And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety,'
He had written, 'There is no such thing as natural piety, because the natural man is at enmity with God.' P. 43, under the Verses 'To H. C., six years old'--'This is all in the highest degree imaginative and equal to any poet, but not superior. I cannot think that real poets have any competition. None are greatest in the kingdom of heaven. It is so in poetry.' P. 44, 'On the Influence of Natural Objects,' at the bottom of the page. 'Natural objects always did and now do weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me. Wordsworth must know that what he writes valuable is not to be found in Nature. Bead Michael Angelo's sonnet, vol. iv. p. 179.' That is, the one beginning:
'No mortal object did these eyes behold When first they met the placid light of thine.'[20]
It is remarkable that Blake, whose judgements were on most points so very singular, on one subject closely connected with Wordsworth's poetical reputation should have taken a very commonplace view. Over the heading of the 'Essay Supplementary to the Preface' at the end of the vol. he wrote, 'I do not know who wrote these Prefaces; they are very mischievous, and direct contrary to Wordsworth's own practice' (see "III. From Lady Charlotte Bury's Diary.") This is not the defense of his own style in opposition to what is called Poetic Diction, but a sort of historic vindication of the _unpopular_ poets. On Macpherson, p. 364, Wordsworth wrote with the severity with which all great writers have written of him. Blake's comment below was, 'I believe both Macpherson and Chatterton, that what they say is ancient is so.' And in the following page, 'I own myself an admirer of Ossian equally with any other poet whatever. Rowley and Chatterton also.' And at the end of this Essay he wrote, 'It appears to me as if the last paragraph beginning "Is it the spirit of the whole," etc., was written by another hand and mind from the rest of these Prefaces; they are the opinions of [ ] landscape-painter. Imagination is the divine vision not of the world, nor of man, nor from man as he is a natural man, but only as he is a spiritual man. Imagination has nothing to do with memory.'
1826
1/3/52.
_19th Feb._ It was this day in connection with the assertion that[21] the Bible is the Word of God and all truth is to be found in it, he using language concerning man's reason being opposed to grace very like that used by the Orthodox Christian, that he qualified, and as the same Orthodox would say utterly nullified all he said by declaring that he understood the Bible in a Spiritual sense. As to the natural sense, he said _Voltaire_ was commissioned by God to expose that. 'I have had,' he said, 'much intercourse with Voltaire, and he said to me, "I blasphemed the Son of Man, and it shall be forgiven me, but they (the enemies of Voltaire) blasphemed the Holy Ghost in me, and it shall not be forgiven to them." 'I ask him in what language Voltaire spoke. His answer was ingenious and gave no encouragement to cross-questioning: 'To my sensations it was English. It was like the touch of a musical key; he touched it probably French, but to my ear it became English.' I also enquired as I had before about the form of the persons[22] who appeared to him, and asked why he did not _draw_ them. 'It is not worth while,' he said. 'Besides there are so many that the labour would be too great. And there would be no use in it.' In answer to an enquiry about Shakespeare, 'he is exactly like the old engraving--which is said to be a bad one. I think it very good.' I enquired about his own writings. 'I have written,' he answered, 'more than Rousseau or Voltaire--six or seven Epic poems as long as Homer and 20 Tragedies as long as Macbeth.' He shewed me his 'Version of Genesis,'[23] for so it may be called, as understood by a Christian Visionary. He read a wild passage in a sort of Bible style. 'I shall print[24] no more,' he said. 'When I am commanded by the Spirits, then I write, and the moment I have written, I see the words fly about the room in all directions. It is then published. The Spirits can read, and my MS. is of no further use. I have been tempted to burn my MS., but my wife won't let me.' She is right, I answered; you write not from yourself but from higher order. The MSS. are their property, not yours. You cannot tell what purpose they may answer. This was addressed _ad hominem._ And it indeed amounted only to a deduction from his own principles. He incidentally denied _causation_, every thing being the work of God or Devil. Every man has a Devil in himself, and the conflict between his _Self_ and God is perpetually going on. I ordered of him to-day a copy of his songs for 5 guineas. My[25] manner of receiving his mention of price pleased him. He spoke of his horror of money and of turning pale when it was offered him, and this was certainly unfeigned.
In the No. of the _Gents. Magazine_ for last Jan. there is a letter by _Gromek_ to Blake printed in order to convict Blake of selfishness. It cannot possibly be substantially true. I may elsewhere notice it.
13_th June._ I saw him again in June. He was as wild as ever, says my journal, but he was led today to make assertions more palpably mischievous, if capable of influencing other minds, and immoral, supposing them to express the will[26] of a responsible agent, than anything he had said before. As, for instance, that he had learned from the Bible that Wives should be in common. And when I objected that marriage was a Divine institution, he referred to the Bible--'that from the beginning it was not so.' He affirmed that he had committed many murders, and repeated his doctrine, that reason is the only sin, and that careless, gay people are better than those who think, etc. etc.
It was, I believe, on the 7th of December that I saw him last. I had just heard of the death of Flaxman, a man whom he professed to admire, and was curious to know how he would receive the intelligence. It was as I expected.[27] He had been ill during the summer, and he said with a smile, 'I thought I should have gone first.' He then said, 'I cannot think of death as more than the going out of one room into another.' And Flaxman was no longer thought of. He relapsed into his ordinary train of thinking. Indeed I had by this time learned that there was nothing to be gained by frequent intercourse. And therefore it was that after this interview I was not anxious to be frequent in my visits. This day he said, 'Men are born with an Angel and, a Devil.' This he himself interpreted as Soul and Body, and as I have long since said of the strange sayings of a man who enjoys a high reputation, 'it is more in the language than the thought that this singularity is to be looked for.' And this day he spoke of the Old Testament as if [_sic_] were the evil element. Christ, he said, took much after his mother, and in so far was one of the worst of men. On my asking him for an instance, he referred to his turning the moneychangers out of the Temple--he had no right to do that. He digressed into a condemnation of those who sit in judgement on others. 'I have never known a very bad man who had not something very good about him.'
Speaking of the Atonement in the ordinary Calvinistic sense, he said, 'It is a horrible doctrine; if another pay your debt, I do not forgive it.'
I have no account of any other call--but there is probably an omission. I took Götzenberger to see him, and he met the Masqueriers in my chambers. Masquerier was not the man to meet him. He could not humour Blake nor understand the peculiar sense in which he was to be received.[28]
1827
My journal of this year contains nothing about Blake. But in January 1828 Barron Field and myself called on Mrs. Blake. The poor old lady was more affected than I expected she would be at the sight of me. She spoke of her husband as dying like an angel. She informed me that she was going to live with Linnell as his housekeeper. And we understood that she would live with him, and he, as it were, to farm her services and take all she had. The engravings of Job were his already. Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims were hers. I took two copies--one I gave to C. Lamb. Barron Field took a proof.
Mrs. Blake died within a few years, and since Blake's death Linnell has not found the market I took for granted he would seek for Blake's works. Wilkinson printed a small edition of his poems, including the 'Songs of Innocence and Experience,'[29] a few years ago, and Monkton Mylne talks of printing an edition. I have a few colored engravings--but Blake is still an object of interest exclusively to men of imaginative taste and psychological curiosity. I doubt much whether these mems will be of any use to this small class. I have been reading since the Life of Blake by Allan Cunningham, vol. II. p. 143 of his Lives of the Painters. It recognizes more perhaps of Blake's merit than might be expected of a _Scotch_ realist.
22/3/52.
[Footnote 1: The article appeared under the title: 'William Blake, Künstler, Dichter und religiöser Schwärmer' (aus dem Englischen) on pp. 107-131 of the _Vaterländisches Museum_, Zweiter Band, Erstes Heft. Hamburg, bey Friedrich Perthes. 1811.' It has the motto:
'The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact.'
SHAKESPEARE.
Five of Blake's poems, 'To the Muse?, Piping down the valleys wild, Holy Thursday, The Tyger, The Garden of Love,' together with ten lines from the Prophetic Books, are quoted, with German versions in the metres of the original by Dr. Julius, the translator of the article. On p. 101 there is an article, 'Von der neuesten englischen Poesie,' containing notices of 'Poems by W. Cowper' (1803), 'Works of R. Burns,'and 'Southey's Poems' (1801) and 'Metrical Tales' (1803).]
[Footnote 2: 'Like' is first written, and replaced by 'live.']
[Footnote 3: 'Took' crossed out.]
[Footnote 4: 'With an air of feebleness' crossed out.]
[Footnote 5: After 'indifference and' 'the entire absence of anything like blame ['reproach' crossed out], and I do not think that I ever heard him blame anything, then or afterwards crossed out.]
[Footnote 6: 'Pretty much' crossed out.]
[Footnote 7: 'Comparing these fragmentary memoranda' crossed out.]
[Footnote 8: Crossed out:
'Yet this did not appear to affect the truth of his Visions. I could not reconcile this with his blaming Wordsworth for being a Platonist--not a Christian. He asked whether Wordsworth acknowledged the Scriptures as Divine, and declared on my answering in the affirmative that the Introduction to the Excursion had troubled him so as to bring on a fit of illness. The passage that offended Blake was:
'Jehovah with his thunder and the choir Of shouting Angels and the empyreal throne, I pass them unalarmed.
"Does Mr. Wordsworth," said Blake, "think his mind can _surpass_ Jehovah's." I tried in vain to rescue Wordsworth from the imputation of being a Pagan or perhaps an Atheist, but this did not rob him of the character of being the great poet. Indeed Atheism meant but little in Blake's mind as will hereafter appear. Therefore when he declared Dante to be an Atheist, etc.'
In the margin: See of Wordsworth as Blake judged of him, p. 46 _et seq_. (i.e. "1826, 27/2/52" below.)]
[Footnote 9: 'Dante saw Devils where I saw none' crossed out.]
[Footnote 10: 'Most unconscious simplicity' crossed out.]
[Footnote 11: 'It was after my first interview with him that I expressed what I must repeat now--my regret' crossed out.]
[Footnote 12: 'He smiled' omitted.]
[Footnote 13: 'Marks' crossed out.]
[Footnote 14: 'More' crossed out.]
[Footnote 15: 'And yet he afterwards said that he was _then_ with God' crossed out.]
[Footnote 16: 'The plea' crossed out.]
[Footnote 17: 'And seemingly undisturbed by the' crossed out.]
[Footnote 18: 'Which I have anticipated, and which he characterised as Atheism, that is, in worshipping Nature. See page' crossed out.]
[Footnote 19: 'He gave me a copy of these lines in his hand, with this note at the end' crossed out.]
[Footnote 20: 'An admirable assertion of the ideal' crossed out.]
[Footnote 21: 'Some of Wordsworth's' crossed out.]
[Footnote 22: 'Spirits' crossed out.]
[Footnote 23: 'Vision of Genesis' crossed out.]
[Footnote 24: 'Write' crossed out.]
[Footnote 25: 'Immediate 'crossed out.]
[Footnote 26: 'Character' crossed out.]
[Footnote 27: 'As might have been expected' crossed out.]
[Footnote 28: 'Understood' crossed out.]
[Footnote 29: 'And some other poems' crossed out.]
(II.) FROM 'A FATHER'S MEMOIRS OF HIS CHILD,' BY BENJAMIN HEATH MALKIN (1806)
[This, the first printed account of Blake, is taken from the dedicatory epistle of 'A Father's Memoirs of his Child,' by Benj. Heath Malkin, Esq., M.A., F.A.S. (London: Printed for Longmans, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster Row, by T. Bensley, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, 1806), to Thomas Johnes, the translator of Froissart. I have given everything that relates to Blake, with enough of the remainder to explain the purpose of the dedication. Malkin was himself, perhaps, already engaged on the translation of _Gil Blas_, which he brought out in 1809. The frontispiece to the Memoirs, designed by Blake, and engraved by Cromek, consists of a portrait of little Malkin, from a miniature, surrounded by a design of the child saying good-bye to his mother, and floating up to heaven, hand in hand with an ample and benign angel.]
TO THOMAS JOHNES, OF HAFOD, ESQ., M.P., LORD LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTY OF CARDIGAN, ETC. ETC. ETC.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I have been influenced by several motives, in prefixing your name to the following pages. My pen seems destined to owe its employment, in some shape or other, to Hafod....
You may perhaps recollect, that while I was staying with you last summer, our conversations were nearly as rambling and as various, as our rides over your new mountain-farms, or as the subject matter of these preliminary remarks seems likely to be.... It would have been unnatural, to have concealed the mark of an afflicting dispensation, in society so capable of consoling the survivor, and appreciating the merit of the departed. In the interchange of our thoughts on this subject, the task of furnishing the public with the following facts was urged upon me, at once as a tribute to the latter, and a relief to the feelings of the former.... On mentioning my design to some of my friends, they expressed their regret, that I had not determined on it sooner.... In every other respect, but that of catching attention while the object is still before the eye, the interval must be considered as an advantage.... I have been asked, 'How could you get over such a loss?' I need not say, that this was not your question, for you could never have found it on the list of possible interrogatories: and to you, for that very reason, will I answer it.
I got over this great loss, by considering at once what I had left; how unavailing the lengthened and excessive indulgence of grief would have been to myself, and how useless it would have rendered me to others....
Besides this comparison of my own, with the probable or actual circumstances of others, I bore my disappointment the better for the recollection, that personal regards are selfish. If my thoughts were disposed to dwell on the mortifying idea, that society might have lost an ornament derived to it through me, they were soon checked, and ashamed of their presumption. Topics of private bewailing or condolence, of whatever magnitude they may appear to the individual, can never be modestly transferred to general interest. But it was my principal consolation, that the change to him must have been for the better. Supposing the opinion to have been rational and probable, that the promise of this child would have ripened into something more than fair capacity and marketable talent, the prolongation of life was to himself perhaps the less desirable on that very account. It rarely happens, that the world affords even the ordinary allowance of happiness to men of transcendent faculties. Their merits are too frequently denied the protection and encouragement, to which they feel themselves entitled, from the private intimations of their own scrutinizing spirit. When they are most successful, the composure of their minds does not always keep pace with the prosperity of their fortunes. They necessarily have but few companions; few, who are capable of appreciating their high endowments, and entering into the grandeur of their conceptions. Of these few, those who come the nearest to their own rank and standard, those who might be the associates of their inmost thoughts, and the partners of their dearest interests, are too often envious of their fame. It is a common remark, that great men are not gregarious. This is but too just; and so much of man's happiness depends upon society, that the comparative solitude, to which a commanding genius condemns its possessor, detracts considerably from the sum of his personal enjoyment.
While I am on this subject, I cannot forbear enlarging somewhat on an instance the more apposite, as being casually connected with the subsequent pages. Hitherto, it has confirmed the observation just hazarded, on the probable fate of stubborn originality in human life. There seems now indeed some prospect, that the current will turn: and I shall be eager, on the evidence of the very first deponent, to disencumber myself of an opinion, which pays so ill a compliment to our nature. In the meantime, I am confident that you, and my other readers of taste and feeling, will readily forgive my travelling a little out of the record, for the purpose of descanting on merit, which ought to be more conspicuous, and which must have become so long since, but for opinions and habits of an eccentric kind.
It is, I hope, unnecessary to call your attention to the ornamental device, round the portrait in this book; but I cannot so easily refrain from introducing to you the designer.
Mr. William Blake, very early in life, had the ordinary opportunities of seeing pictures in the houses of noblemen and gentlemen, and in the king's palaces. He soon improved such casual occasions of study, by attending sales at Langford's, Christie's, and other auction-rooms. At ten years of age he was put to Mr. Pars's drawing-school in the Strand, where he soon attained the art of drawing from casts in plaster of the various antiques. His father bought for him the Gladiator, the Hercules, the Venus of Medicis, and various heads, hands and feet. The same indulgent parent soon supplied him with money to buy prints; when he immediately began his collection, frequenting the shops of the print-dealers, and the sales of the auctioneers. Langford called him his little connoisseur; and often knocked down to him a cheap lot, with friendly precipitation. He copied Raphael and Michael Angelo, Martin Hemskerck and Albert Dürer, Julio Romano, and the rest of the historic class, neglecting to buy any other prints, however celebrated. His choice was for the most part contemned by his youthful companions, who were accustomed to laugh at what they called his mechanical taste. At the age of fourteen, he fixed on the engraver of Stuart's Athens and West's Pylades and Orestes for his master, to whom he served seven years' apprenticeship. Basire, whose taste was like his own, approved of what he did. Two years passed over smoothly enough, till two other apprentices were added to the establishment, who completely destroyed its harmony. Blake, not choosing to take part with his master against his fellow apprentices, was sent out to make drawings. This circumstance he always mentions with gratitude to Basire, who said that he was too simple and they too cunning.
He was employed in making drawings from old buildings and monuments, and occasionally, especially in winter, in engraving from those drawings. This occupation led him to an acquaintance with those neglected works of art, called Gothic monuments. There he found a treasure, which he knew how to value. He saw the simple and plain road to the style of art at which he aimed, unentangled in the intricate windings of modern practice. The monuments of Kings and Queens in Westminster Abbey, which surround the chapel of Edward the Confessor, particularly that of King Henry the Third, the beautiful monument and figure of Queen Elinor, Queen Philippa, King Edward the Third, King Richard the Second and his Queen, were among his first studies. All these he drew in every point he could catch, frequently standing on the monument, and viewing the figures from the top. The heads he considered as portraits; and all the ornaments appeared as miracles of art, to his Gothicised imagination. He then drew Aymer de Valence's monument, with his fine figure on the top. Those exquisite little figures which surround it, though dreadfully mutilated, are still models for the study of drapery. But I do not mean to enumerate all his drawings, since they would lead me over all the old monuments in Westminster Abbey, as well as over other churches in and about London.
Such was his employment at Basire's. As soon as he was out of his time, he began to engrave two designs from the History of England, after drawings which he had made in the holiday hours of his apprenticeship. They were selected from a great number of historical compositions, the fruits of his fancy. He continued making designs for his own amusement, whenever he could steal a moment from the routine of business; and began a course of study at the Royal Academy, under the eye of Mr. Moser. Here he drew with great care, perhaps all, or certainly nearly all the noble antique figures in various views. But now his peculiar notions began to intercept him in his career. He professes drawing from life always to have been hateful to him; and speaks of it as looking more like death, or smelling of mortality. Yet still he drew a good deal from life, both at the academy and at home. In this manner has he managed his talents, till he is himself almost become a Gothic monument. On a view of his whole life, he still thinks himself authorized to pronounce, that practice and opportunity very soon teach the language of art: but its spirit and poetry, which are seated in the imagination alone, never can be taught; and these make an artist.
Mr. Blake has long been known to the order of men among whom he ranks; and is highly esteemed by those, who can distinguish excellence under the disguise of singularity. Enthusiastic and high-flown notions on the subject of religion have hitherto, as they usually do, prevented his general reception, as a son of taste and of the muses. The sceptic and the rational believer, uniting their forces against the visionary, pursue and scare a warm and brilliant imagination, with the hue and cry of madness. Not contented with bringing down the reasonings of the mystical philosopher, as they well may, to this degraded level, they apply the test of cold calculation and mathematical proof to departments of the mind, which are privileged to appeal from so narrow and rigorous a tribunal. They criticize the representations of corporeal beauty, and the allegoric emblems of mental perfections; the image of the visible world, which appeals to the senses for a testimony to its truth, or the type of futurity and the immortal soul, which identifies itself with our hopes and with our hearts, as if they were syllogisms or theorems, demonstrable propositions or consecutive corollaries. By them have the higher powers of this artist been kept from public notice, and his genius tied down, as far as possible, to the mechanical department of his profession. By them, in short, has he been stigmatized as an engraver, who might do tolerably well, if he was not mad. But men, whose names will bear them out, in what they affirm, have now taken up his cause. On occasion of Mr. Blake engaging to illustrate the poem of The Grave, some of the first artists in this country have stept forward, and liberally given the sanction of ardent and encomiastic applause. Mr. Fuseli, with a mind far superior to that jealousy above described, has written some introductory remarks in the Prospectus of the work. To these he has lent all the penetration of his understanding, with all the energy and descriptive power characteristic of his style. Mr. Hope and Mr. Locke have pledged their character as connoisseurs, by approving and patronizing these designs. Had I been furnished with an opportunity of showing them to you, I should, on Mr. Blake's behalf, have requested your concurring testimony, which you would not have refused me, had you viewed them in the same light.
Neither is the capacity of this untutored proficient limited to his professional occupation. He has made several irregular and unfinished attempts at poetry. He has dared to venture on the ancient simplicity; and feeling it in his own character and manners, has succeeded better than those, who have only seen it through a glass. His genius in this line assimilates more with the bold and careless freedom, peculiar to our writers at the latter end of the sixteenth, and former part of the seventeenth century, than with the polished phraseology, and just, but subdued thought of the eighteenth. As the public have hitherto had no opportunity of passing sentence on his poetical powers, I shall trespass on your patience, while I introduce a few specimens from a collection, circulated only among the author's friends, and richly embellished by his pencil.
LAUGHING SONG
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by, When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it,
When the meadows laugh with lively green, And the grasshopper laughs in this merry scene, When Mary and Susan and Emily, With their sweet round mouths, sing Ha, ha, he!
When the painted birds laugh in the shade, Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread, Come live and be merry and join with me, To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, ha, he!
The Fairy Glee of Oberon, which Stevens's exquisite music has familiarized to modern ears, will immediately occur to the reader of these laughing stanzas. We may also trace another less obvious resemblance to Jonson, in an ode gratulatory to the Right Honourable Hierome, Lord Weston, for his return from his embassy, in the year 1632. The accord is to be found, not in the words nor in the subject; for either would betray imitation: but in the style of thought, and, if I may so term it, the date of the expression.
Such pleasure as the teeming earth Doth take in easy nature's birth, When she puts forth the life of every thing: And in a dew of sweetest rain, She lies delivered without pain, Of the prime beauty of the year, the spring.
The rivers in their shores do run, The clouds rack clear before the sun, The rudest winds obey the calmest air: Rare plants from every bank do rise, And every plant the sense surprise, Because the order of the whole is fair!
The very verdure of her nest, Wherein she sits so richly drest, As all the wealth of season there was spread; Doth show the graces and the hours Have multiplied their arts and powers, In making soft her aromatic bed.
Such joys, such sweets, doth your return Bring all your friends, fair lord, that burn With love, to hear your modesty relate The bus'ness of your blooming wit, With all the fruit shall follow it, Both to the honor of the king and state.
The following poem of Blake is in a different character. It expresses with majesty and pathos the feelings of a benevolent mind, on being present at a sublime display of national munificence and charity.
HOLY THURSDAY
'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green; Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow; Till into the high dome of Paul's, they, like Thames' waters, flow.
Oh! What a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own! The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs; Thousands of little boys and girls, raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song, Or like harmonious thunderings, the seats of heaven among! Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor: Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
The book of Revelation, which may well be supposed to engross much of Mr. Blake's study, seems to have directed him, in common with Milton, to some of the foregoing images. 'And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.' Milton comprises the mighty thunderings in the epithet 'loud,' and adopts the comparison of many waters, which image our poet, having in the first stanza appropriated differently, to their flow rather than to their sound, exchanges in the last for that of a mighty wind.
He ended; and the heav'nly audience loud Sung hallelujah, as the sound of sees, Through multitude that sung.
_Paradise Lost_, Book X. 641.
It may be worth a moment's consideration, whether Dr. Johnson's remarks on devotional poetry, though strictly just where he applies them, to the artificial compositions of Waller and Watts, are universally and necessarily true. Watts seldom rose above the level of a mere versifier. Waller, though entitled to the higher appellation of poet, had formed himself rather to elegance and delicacy, than to passionate emotions or a lofty and dignified deportment. The devotional pieces of the Hebrew bards are clothed in that simple language, to which Johnson with justice ascribes the character of sublimity. There is no reason therefore why the poets of other nations should not be equally successful, if they think with the same purity, and express themselves in the same unaffected terms. He says indeed with truth, that 'Repentance trembling in the presence of the judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets.' But though we should exclude the severer topics from our catalogue, mercy and benevolence may be treated poetically, because they are in unison with the mild spirit of poetry. They are seldom treated successfully; but the fault is not in the subject. The mind of the poet is too often at leisure for the mechanical prettinesses of cadence and epithet, when it ought to be engrossed by higher thoughts. Words and numbers present themselves unbidden, when the soul is inspired by sentiment, elevated by enthusiasm, or ravished by devotion. I leave it to the reader to determine, whether the following stanzas have any tendency to vindicate this species of poetry; and whether their simplicity and sentiment at all make amends for their unartificial and unassuming construction.
THE DIVINE IMAGE
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God our Father dear: And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is man, his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart; Pity, a human face; And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form. In Heathen, Turk, or Jew! Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, There God is dwelling too.
Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Tarquin and Lucrece, and his Sonnets, occasioned it to be said by a contemporary, that, 'As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous honey-tongued Shakespeare.' These poems, now little read, were favorite studies of Mr. Blake's early days. So were Jonson's Underwoods and Miscellanies, and he seems to me to have caught his manner, more than that of Shakespeare in his trifles. The following song is a good deal in the spirit of the Hue and Cry after Cupid, in the Masque on Lord Haddington's marriage. It was written before the age of fourteen, in the heat of youthful fancy, unchastized by judgment. The poet, as such, takes the very strong liberty of equipping himself with wings, and thus appropriates his metaphorical costume to his corporeal fashion and seeming. The conceit is not unclassical; but Pindar and the ancient lyrics arrogated to themselves the bodies of swans for their august residence. Our Gothic songster is content to be encaged by Cupid; and submits, like a young lady's favorite, to all the vagaries of giddy curiosity and tormenting fondness.
How sweet I roamed from field to field, And tasted all the summer's pride, Till I the prince of love beheld, Who in the sunny beams did glide!
He showed me lilies for my hair, And blushing roses for my brow; He led me through his gardens fair, Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet May dews my wings were wet, And Phoebus fired my vocal rage; He caught me in his silken net, And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing, Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, And mocks my loss of liberty.
The playful character ascribed to the prince of love, especially his wanton and fantastic action while sporting with his captive, in the two last stanzas, render it probable that the author had read the Hue and Cry after Cupid. If so, it had made its impression; but the lines could scarcely have been remembered at the time of writing, or the resemblance would have been closer. The stanzas to which I especially allude, are these.
Wings he hath, which though ye clip, He will leap from lip to lip, Over liver, lights, and heart, But not stay in any part; And, if chance his arrow misses, He will shoot himself, in kisses.
Idle minutes are his reign; Then the straggler makes his gain, By presenting maids with toys, And would have ye think'em joys: 'Tis th' ambition of the elf, To have all childish as himself.
The two following little pieces are added, as well by way of contrast, as for the sake of their respective merits. In the first, there is a simple and pastoral gaiety, which the poets of a refined age have generally found much more difficult of attainment, than the glitter of wit, or the affectation of antithesis. The second rises with the subject. It wears that garb of grandeur, which the idea of creation communicates to a mind of the higher order. Our bard, having brought the topic he descants on from warmer latitudes than his own, is justified in adopting an imagery, of almost oriental feature and complexion.
SONG
I love the jocund dance, The softly breathing song, Where innocent eyes do glance, And where lisps the maiden's tongue.
I love the laughing gale, I love the echoing hill, Where mirth does never fail, And the jolly swain laughs his fill.
I love the pleasant cot, I love the innocent bower, Where white and brown is our lot, Or fruit in the midday hour.
I love the oaken seat, Beneath the oaken tree, Where all the old villagers meet, And laugh our sports to see.
I love our neighbors all, But, Kitty, I better love thee; And love them I ever shall; But thou art all to me.
THE TIGER
Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, In the forest of the right! What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies, Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? When thy heart began to beat, What dread hand forged thy dread feet?
What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dared its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he, who made the lamb, make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright, In the forest of the night; What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Besides these lyric compositions, Mr. Blake has given several specimens of blank verse. Here, as might be expected, his personifications are bold, his thoughts original, and his style of writing altogether epic in its structure. The unrestrained measure, however, which should warn the poet to restrain himself, has not infrequently betrayed him into so wild a pursuit of fancy, as to leave harmony unregarded, and to pass the line prescribed by criticism to the career of imagination.
But I have been leading you beside our subject, into a labyrinth of poetical comment, with as little method or ceremony, as if we were to have no witness of our correspondence. It is time we should return from the masking regions of poetry, to the business with which we set out. Donne, in his Anatomy of the World, remarks the Egyptians to have acted wisely, in bestowing more cost upon their tombs than on their houses. This example he adduces, to justify his own Funeral Elegies: and I may perhaps be allowed to adopt it, as an additional plea, should my former be of no avail, for coming forward with this piece of almost infantine biography....
I regret, my dear friend, that it was not in my power to furnish you and my readers with a portrait of a later date. We had often talked of allowing ourselves that indulgence; but we were not privy to the event, which was to have communicated to it an incalculable value. The engraving here given, though it might well be taken to represent a much older child, is from a very beautiful miniature, painted by Paye, when Thomas was not quite two years old. He then was only beginning to speak; but there was even at that early period an intelligence in his eye, and an expression about his mouth, which are, I hope, sufficiently characterized in the delineation to afford no inadequate idea of his physiognomy....
At all events, this work, though it should escape censure, can rank no higher than a trifle. What apology must I make for addressing it to a fellow-laborer, who has accomplished the serious and difficult task of giving an English dress to Froissart? I think it was Gray who denominated your venerable original the Herodotus of a barbarous age; But surely that age is entitled to a more respectful epithet, when France could boast its Froissart, Italy its Petrarch, England its Wickliffe, the father of our reformation, and Chaucer, the father of our poetry. If I might slightly alter the designation of so complete a critic, I would prefer calling this simple and genuine historian, the Herodotus of chivalry. But by whatever title we are to greet him, the interesting minuteness of his recital, affording a strong pledge of its fidelity, the lively delineation of manners, and the charm of unadulterated language, all conspire to place him in the first rank of early writers. The public began to revolt from that spirit of philosophizing on the most common occasions, in consequence of which our modern historians seem to be more ingenious in assigning causes and motives, than assiduous to ascertain facts. We are returning home to plain tales and first-hand authorities; and you will share the honor of pointing out the way. Froissart, hitherto inaccessible to English readers in general, from the obsolete garb both of the French and of Lord Berners's translation, may now be read in such a form, as to unite a peculiar thought and turn of the ancient with the intelligible phraseology of modern times. With my best congratulations on your success, and my earnest request to be forgiven for thus intruding on your leisure, believe me to be, my dear friend, faithfully yours,
B. H. MALKIN.
HACKNEY, _January_ 4, 1806.
(III.) FROM LADY CHARLOTTE BURY'S DIARY (1820)
[This extract from the _Diary illustrative of the Times of George the Fourth_, by Lady Charlotte Bury, afterwards Lady Charlotte Campbell, published anonymously, and edited by John Galt, in four volumes, in 1839, was first noticed by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, who printed it in the _Athenaeum._ It is from vol. iii. pp. 345-318.]
FROM LADY CHARLOTTE BURY'S DIARY (1820)
_Tuesday_, _the_ 20_th of January_ [1820].--I dined at Lady C. L----'s. She had collected a strange party of artists and literati and one or two fine folks, who were very ill assorted with the rest of the company, and appeared neither to give nor receive pleasure from the society among whom they were mingled. Sir T. Lawrence, next whom I sat at dinner, is as courtly as ever. His conversation is agreeable, but I never feel as if he was saying what he really thought....
Besides Sir T., there was also present of this profession Mrs. M., the miniature painter, a modest, pleasing person; like the pictures she executes, soft and sweet. Then there was another eccentric little artist, by name Blake; not a regular professional painter, but one of those persons who follow the art for its own sweet sake, and derive their happiness from its pursuit. He appeared to me to be full of beautiful imaginations and genius; but how far the execution of his designs is equal to the conceptions of his mental vision, I know not, never having seen them. _Main-d'oeuvre_ is frequently wanting where the mind is most powerful Mr. Blake appears unlearned in all that concerns this world, and, from what he said, I should fear he is one of those whose feelings are far superior to his situation in life. He looks care-worn and subdued; but his countenance radiated as he spoke of his favorite pursuit, and he appeared gratified by talking to a person who comprehended his feelings. I can easily imagine that he seldom meets with any one who enters into his views; for they are peculiar, and exalted above the common level of received opinions. I could not help contrasting this humble artist with the great and powerful Sir Thomas Lawrence, and thinking that the one was fully if not more worthy of the distinction and the fame to which the other has attained, but from which _he_ is far removed. Mr. Blake, however, though he may have as much right, from talent and merit, to the advantages of which Sir Thomas is possessed, evidently lacks that worldly wisdom and that grace of manner which make a man gain an eminence in his profession, and succeed in society. Every word he uttered spoke the perfect simplicity of his mind, and his total ignorance of all worldly matters. He told me that Lady C---- L---- had been very kind to him. 'Ah!' said he, 'there is a deal of kindness in that lady.' I agreed with him, and though it was impossible not to laugh at the strange manner in which she had arranged this party, I could not help admiring the goodness of heart and discrimination of talent which had made her patronize this unknown artist. Sir T. Lawrence looked at me several times whilst I was talking with Mr. B., and I saw his lips curl with a sneer, as if he despised me for conversing with so insignificant a person.[1] It was very evident Sir Thomas did not like the company he found himself in, though he was too well-bred and too prudent to hazard a remark upon the subject.
The literati were also of various degrees of eminence, beginning with Lord B----, and ending with----. The grandees were Lord L----, who appreciates talent, and therefore not so ill assorted with the party as was Mrs. G----and Lady C----, who did nothing but yawn the whole evening, and Mrs A----, who all looked with evident contempt upon the surrounding company.
[Footnote 1: There is surely some mistake in this supposition, for Sir T. Lawrence was, afterwards at least, one of Mr. Blake's great patrons and admirers.]
(IV.) BLAKE'S HOROSCOPE (1825)
[Blake's horoscope was cast during his lifetime in _Urania_, or, the Astrologer's Chronicle, and Mystical Magazine; edited by Merlinus Anglicanus, jun., the Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century, assisted by the Metropolitan Society of Occult Philosophers (No. I, London, 1825), the first and only number of an astrological magazine, published under the pseudonym of Merlinus Anglicanus by R. C. Smith, an astrologer of the period, and it is highly probable, as Dr. Garnett suggests, that the date (confirmed by the birth register at St. James's, Westminster) was derived from Varley, who would have had it from Blake himself. I give the map, not as it is printed in the book, but in the clearer and simpler form in which it was copied and given to me by Dr. Garnett. I am told that the most striking thing in the map, from an astrological point of view, is the position and aspect of Uranus, the occult planet, which indicate in the highest degree 'an inborn and supreme instinct for things occult,' without showing the least tendency towards madness. The 'Nativity of Mr. Blake' is the last entry, Footnote [2] in "William Blake, chapter II."]
NATIVITY OF MR. BLAKE,
THE MYSTICAL ARTIST
The above horoscope is calculated for the _estimate_ time of birth, and Mr. Blake, the subject thereof, is well known amongst scientific characters, as having a most peculiar and extraordinary turn of genius and vivid imagination. His illustrations of the Book of Job have met with much and deserved praise; indeed, in the line which this artist has adopted, he is perhaps equalled by none of the present day. Mr. Blake is no less peculiar and _outré_ in his ideas, as he seems to have some curious intercourse with the invisible world; and, according to his own account (in which he is certainly, to all appearance, perfectly sincere), he is continually surrounded by the spirits of the deceased of all ages, nations, and countries. He has, so he affirms, held actual conversations with Michael Angelo, Raphael, Milton, Dryden, and the worthies of antiquity. He has now by him a long poem nearly finished, which he affirms was recited to him by the spirit of Milton; and the mystical drawings of this gentleman are no less curious and worthy of notice, by all those whose minds soar above the cloggings of this terrestrial element, to which we are most of us too fastly chained to comprehend the nature and operations of the world of spirits.
Mr. Blake's pictures of the last judgment, his profiles of Wallace, Edward the Sixth, Harold, Cleopatra, and numerous others which we have seen, are really wonderful for the spirit in which they are delineated. We have been in company with this gentleman several times, and have frequently been not only delighted with his conversation, but also filled with feelings of wonder at his extraordinary faculties; which, whatever some may say to the contrary, are by no means tinctured with superstition, as he certainly believes what he promulgates. Our limits will not permit us to enlarge upon this geniture, which we merely give as an example worthy to be noticed by the astrological student in his list of remarkable nativities. But it is probable that the extraordinary faculties and eccentricities of idea which this gentleman possesses, are the effects of the Moon in Cancer in the twelfth house (both sign and house being mystical), in trine to Herschell from the mystical sign Pisces, from the house of science, and from the mundane trine to Saturn in the scientific sign Aquarius, which latter planet is in square to Mercury in Scorpio, and in quintile to the Sun and Jupiter, in the mystical sign Sagittarius. The square of Mars and Mercury, from fixed signs, also, has a remarkable tendency to sharpen the intellects, and lay the foundation of extraordinary ideas. There are also many other reasons for the strange peculiarities above noticed, but these the student will no doubt readily discover.
(V.) OBITUARY NOTICES IN THE LITERARY GAZETTE' AND 'GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE,' 1827.
[Obituary Notices of Blake appeared in the _Literary Gazette_ of August 18, 1827 (pp. 540-41), the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of October 1827 (pp. 377-8), and the _Annual Register_ of 1827, in its Appendix of Deaths (pp. 253-4). The notice in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ is largely condensed from that in the _Literary Gazette_, but with a different opening, which I have given after the notice in the _Literary Gazette._ The notice in the _Annual Register_ is merely condensed from the _Gentleman's Magazine._]
I
WILLIAM BLAKE
_The Illustrator of the Grave, etc._
To those few who have sympathies for the ideal and (comparatively speaking) the intellectual in art, the following notice is addressed. Few persons of taste are unacquainted with the designs by Blake, appended as illustrations to a 4to edition of Blair's Grave. It was borne forth into the world on the warmest praises of all our prominent artists, Hoppner, Phillips, Stothard, Flaxman, Opie, Tresham, Westmacott, Beechey, Lawrence, West, Nollekins, Shee, Owen, Rossi, Thomson, Cosway, and Soane; and doubly assured with a preface by the learned and severe Fuseli, the latter part of which we transcribe--'The author of the moral series before us has endeavored to wake sensibility by touching our sympathies with nearer, less ambiguous, and less ludicrous imagery, than what mythology, Gothic superstition, or symbols as far-fetched as inadequate could supply. His invention has been chiefly employed to spread a familiar and domestic atmosphere round the most important of all subjects--to connect the visible and the invisible world, without provoking probability--and to lead the eye from the milder light of time to the radiations of eternity. Such is the plan and the moral part of the author's invention; the technic part, and the execution of the artist, though to be examined by other principles, and addressed to a narrower circle, equally claim approbation, sometimes excite our wonder, and not seldom our fears, when we see him play on the very verge of legitimate invention; but wildness so picturesque in itself, so often redeemed by taste, simplicity, and elegance--what child of fancy, what artist, would wish to discharge? The groups and single figures, on their own basis, abstracted from the general composition, and considered without attention to the plan, frequently exhibit those genuine and unaffected attitudes, those simple graces, which nature and the heart alone can dictate, and only an eye inspired by both discover. Every class of artists, in every stage of their progress and attainments, from the student to the finished master, and from the contriver of ornament to the painter of history, will here find materials of art, and hints of improvement!'
When it is stated, that the pure-minded Flaxman pointed out to an eminent literary man the obscurity of Blake as a melancholy proof of English apathy towards the grand, the philosophic, or the enthusiastically devotional painter; and that he (Blake) has been several times employed for that truly admirable judge of art, Sir T. Lawrence, any further testimony to his extraordinary powers is unnecessary. Yet has Blake been allowed to exist in a penury which most artists[1]--beings necessarily of a sensitive temperament--would deem intolerable. Pent, with his affectionate wife, in a close back-room in one of the Strand courts, his bed in one corner, his meagre dinner in another, a rickety table holding his copper-plates in progress, his colors, books (among which his Bible, a Sessi Velutello's Dante, and Mr. Carey's translation, were at the top), his large drawings, sketches, and MSS.;--his ankles frightfully swelled, his chest disordered, old age striding on, his wants increased, but not his miserable means and appliances: even yet was his eye undimmed, the fire of his imagination unquenched, and the preternatural, never-resting activity of his mind unflagging. He had not merely a calmly resigned, but a cheerful and mirthful countenance; in short, he was a living commentary on Jeremy Taylor's beautiful chapter on Contentedness. He took no thought for his life, what he should eat, or what he should drink; nor yet for his body, what he should put on; but had a fearless confidence in that Providence which had given him the vast range of the world for his recreation and delight.
_Blake died last Monday!_ Died as he lived! piously cheerful, talking calmly, and finally resigning himself to his eternal rest, like an infant to its sleep. He has left _nothing_ except some pictures, copper-plates, and his principal work of a series of a hundred large designs from Dante.
William Blake was brought up under Basire, the eminent engraver. He was active in mind and body, passing from one occupation to another, without an intervening minute of repose. Of an ardent, affectionate, and grateful temper, he was simple in manner and address, and displayed an inbred courteousness, of the most agreeable character. Next November he would have been _sixty-nine._ At the age of sixty-six he commenced the study of Italian, for the sake of reading Dante in the original, which he accomplished!
His widow is left (we fear, from the accounts which have reached us) in a very forlorn condition, Mr. Blake having latterly been much indebted for succor and consolation to his friend Mr. Linnell, the painter. We have no doubt but her cause will be taken up by the distributors of those funds which are raised for the relief of distressed artists, and also by the benevolence of private individuals.
When further time has been allowed us for inquiry, we shall probably resume this matter; at present (owing the above information to the kindness of a correspondent) we can only record the death of a singular and very able man.
II
MR. WILLIAM BLAKE
Aug. 13, aged 68, Mr. William Blake, an excellent, but eccentric, artist.
He was a pupil of the engraver Basire; and among his earliest productions were eight beautiful plates in the Novelist's Magazine. In 1793 he published in 12mo, 'The Gates of Paradise,' a very small book for children, containing fifteen plates of emblems; and 'published by W. B., 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth'; also about the same time, 'Songs of Experience, with plates'; 'America; a Prophecy,' folio, and 'Europe, a Prophecy,' 1794, folio. These are now become very scarce. In 1797 he commenced, in large folio, an edition of Young's Night Thoughts, of which every page was a design, but only one number was published. In 1805 were produced in 8vo numbers, containing five engravings by Blake, some ballads by Mr. Hayley, but which also were abruptly discontinued. Few persons of taste are unacquainted with the designs by Blake, engraved by Schiavonetti, as illustrations to a 4to edition of Blair's Grave. They are twelve in number, and an excellent portrait of Blake, from a picture by T. Phillips, R.A., is prefixed. It was borne forth ... [Here follows the third sentence, p. 345 above, to the end of the paragraph.]
In 1809 was published in 12mo, 'A Descriptive Catalogue of [sixteen] pictures, poetical and historical inventions, painted by William Blake in watercolors, being the ancient method of fresco painting restored, and drawings, for public inspection, and for sale by private contract.' Among these was a design of Chaucer's Pilgrimage to Canterbury, from which an etching has been published. Mr. Blake's last publication is a set of engravings to illustrate the Book of Job. To Fuseli's testimony of his merit above quoted, it is sufficient to add, that he has been employed by that truly admirable judge of art, Sir Thomas Lawrence; and that the pure-minded Flaxman....
[The remainder is condensed from the _Literary Gazette_, in "The Illustrator of the Grave," above, with the occasional change of a word, or the order of a sentence.]
[Footnote 1: The term is employed in its generic and comprehensive sense.]
(VI.) EXTRACT FROM VARLEY'S ZODIACAL PHYSIOGNOMY (1828)
[John Varley, astrologer and water-color painter, was introduced to Blake by Linnell, and it was for him that Blake did the 'visionary heads' described by Allan Cunningham. (see "VIII Life of Blake by Allan Cunningham.") 'The Ghost of a Flea' exists in both forms described by Varley, in a sketch of the head (which he reproduces, engraved by Linnell, in a plate at the end of his book, together with two other heads in outline), and in a full-length picture in tempera. The passage which follows is taken from pp. 54, 55 of 'A Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy; illustrated with engravings of heads and features: accompanied by tables of the times of rising of the twelve signs of the Zodiac; and containing also new and astrological explanation of some remarkable portions of Ancient Mythological History.' By John Varley. London: Printed for the Author, 1828.]
EXTRACT FROM VARLEY'S ZODIACAL PHYSIOGNOMY
With respect to the vision of the Ghost of the Flea, seen by Blake, it agrees in countenance with one class of people under Gemini, which sign is the significator of the Flea; whose brown color is appropriate to the color of the eyes in some full-toned Gemini persons. And the neatness, elasticity, and tenseness of the Flea are significant of the elegant dancing and fencing sign Gemini. This spirit visited his imagination in such a figure as he never anticipated in an insect. As I was anxious to make the most correct investigation in my power, of the truth of these visions, on hearing of this spiritual apparition of a Flea, I asked him if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he saw: he instantly said, 'I see him now before me.' I therefore gave him paper and a pencil, with which he drew the portrait, of which a facsimile is given in this number. I felt convinced by his mode of proceeding that he had a real image before him, for he left off, and began on another part of the paper to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch, till he had closed it. During the time occupied in completing the drawing, the Flea told him that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of such men as were by nature blood-thirsty to excess, and were therefore providentially confined to the size and form of insects; otherwise, were he himself, for instance, the size of a horse, he would depopulate a great portion of the country. He added, that if in attempting to leap from one island to another, he should fall into the sea, he could swim, and should not be lost. This spirit afterwards appeared to Blake, and afforded him a view of his whole figure; an engraving of which I shall give in this work.
(VII.) BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF BLAKE BY J. T. SMITH (1828)
[The Memoir of Blake by John Thomas Smith, Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, is the last of the 'Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of several Artists and others contemporary with Nollekens,' contained in the second volume of 'Nollekens and his Times: comprehending a Life of that celebrated Sculptor; and Memoirs of several contemporary Artists, from the' time of Roubiliac, Hogarth, and Reynolds, to that of Fuseli, Flaxman, and Blake.' (London: Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street, 1828.) It contains more facts at first hand than any other account of Blake, and is really the foundation of all subsequent biographies. I have added a page, which is not without its significance, from a later book by Smith, 'A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the last Sixty-five Years' (1845), where it occurs under date 1784, on pp. 81, 82.]
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF BLAKE
I believe it has been invariably the custom of every age, whenever a man has been found to depart from the usual mode of thinking, to consider him of deranged intellect, and not infrequently stark staring mad; which judgment his calumniators would pronounce with as little hesitation, as some of the uncharitable part of mankind would pass sentence of death upon a poor half-drowned cur who had lost his master, or one who had escaped hanging with a rope about his neck. Cowper, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, dated June 3, 1788, speaking of a dancing-master's advertisement, says, 'The author of it had the good hap to be crazed, or he had never produced anything half so clever; for you will ever observe, that they who are said to have lost their wits, have more than other people.'
Bearing this stigma of eccentricity, William Blake, with most extraordinary zeal, commenced his efforts in Art under the roof of No. 28 Broad Street, Carnaby Market; in which house he was born, and where his father carried on the business of a hosier. William, the subject of the following pages, who was his second son, showing an early stretch of mind, and a strong talent for drawing, being totally destitute of the dexterity of a London shopman, so well described by Dr. Johnson, was sent away from the counter as a booby, and placed under the late Mr. James Basire, an artist well known for many years as engraver to the Society of Antiquaries. From him he learned the mechanical part of his art, and as he drew carefully, and copied faithfully, his master frequently and confidently employed him to make drawings from monuments to be engraved.
After leaving his instructor, in whose house he had conducted himself with the strictest propriety, he became acquainted with Flaxman, the sculptor, through his friend Stothard, and was also honored by an introduction to the accomplished Mrs. Mathew, whose house, No. 27, in Rathbone Place, was then frequented by most of the literary and talented people of the day. This lady--to whom I also had the honor of being known, and whose door and purse were constantly open and ready to cherish persons of genius who stood in need of assistance in their learned and arduous pursuits, worldly concerns, or inconveniences--was so extremely zealous in promoting the celebrity of Blake, that upon hearing him read some of his early efforts in poetry, she thought so well of them, as to request the Bev. Henry Mathew, her husband, to join Mr. Flaxman in his truly kind offer of defraying the expense of printing them; in which he not only acquiesced, but, with his usual urbanity, wrote the following advertisement, which precedes the poems:
'The following sketches were the production of an untutored youth, commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the author till his twentieth year; since which time, his talents having been wholly directed to the attainment of excellence in his profession, he has been deprived of the leisure requisite to such a revisal of these sheets, as might have rendered them less unfit to meet the public eye.
'Conscious of the irregularities and defects to be found in almost every page, his friends have still believed that they possessed a poetical originality, which merited some respite from oblivion. These, their opinions, remain, however, to be now reproved or confirmed by a less partial public.'
The annexed Song is a specimen of the juvenile playfulness of Blake's muse, copied from page 10 of these Poems.[1]
SONG
'How sweet I roam'd from field to field, And tasted all the Summer's pride, Till I the Prince of Love beheld, Who in the sunny beams did glide!
'He show'd me lilies for my hair, And blushing roses for my brow; He led me through his gardens fair, Where all his golden pleasures grow.
'With sweet May-dews my wings were wet, And Phoebus fired my vocal rage; He caught me in his silken net, And shut me in his golden cage.
'He loves to sit and hear me sing, Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, And mocks my loss of liberty.'
But it happened, unfortunately, soon after this period, that in consequence of his unbending deportment, or what his adherents are pleased to call his manly firmness of opinion, which certainly was not at all times considered pleasing by every one, his visits were not so frequent. He, however, continued to benefit by Mrs. Mathew's liberality, and was enabled to continue in partnership, as a print-seller, with his fellow-pupil, Parker, in a shop, No. 27, next door to his father's, in Broad Street; and being extremely partial to Robert, his youngest brother, considered him as his pupil. Bob, as he was familiarly called, was one of my playfellows, and much beloved by all his companions.
Much about this time, Blake wrote many other songs, to which he also composed tunes. These he would occasionally sing to his friends; and though, according to his confession, he was entirely unacquainted with the science of music, his ear was so good, that his tunes were sometimes most singularly beautiful, and were noted down by musical professors. As for his later poetry, if it may be so called, attached to his plates, though it was certainly in some parts enigmatically curious as to its application, yet it was not always wholly uninteresting; and I have unspeakable pleasure in being able to state, that though I admit he did not for the last forty years attend any place of Divine worship, yet he was not a Freethinker, as some invidious detractors have thought proper to assert, nor was he ever in any degree irreligious. Through life, his Bible was everything with him; and as a convincing proof how highly he reverenced the Almighty, I shall introduce the following lines with which he concludes his address to the Deists:
'For a tear is an intellectual thing; And a sigh is the sword of an Angel-King; And the bitter groan of a Martyr's woe Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.'
Again, at page 77, in his address to the Christians:
'I give you the end of a golden string; Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem's wall.'
In his choice of subjects, and in his designs in Art, perhaps no man had higher claim to originality, nor ever drew with a closer adherence to his own conception; and from what I knew of him, and have heard related by his friends, I most firmly believe few artists have been guilty of less plagiarisms than he. It is true, I have seen him admire and heard him expatiate upon the beauties of Marc Antonio and of Albert Dürer; but I verily believe not with any view of borrowing an idea; neither do I consider him at any time dependent in his mode of working, which was generally with the graver only; and as to printing, he mostly took off his own impressions.
After his marriage, which took place at Battersea, and which proved a mutually happy one, he instructed his _beloved_, for so he most frequently called his Kate,[2] and allowed her, till the last moment of his practice, to take off his proof impressions and print his works, which she did most carefully, and ever delighted in the task: nay, she became a draughts-woman; and as a convincing proof that she and her husband were born for each others comfort, she not only entered cheerfully into his views, but, what is curious, possessed a similar power of imbibing ideas, and has produced drawings equally original and, in some respects, interesting.
Blake's peace of mind, as well as that of his Catherine, was much broken by the death of their brother Robert, who was a most amicable link in their happiness; and, as a proof how much Blake respected him, whenever he beheld him in his visions, he implicitly attended to his opinion and advice as to his future projected works. I should have stated, that Blake was supereminently endowed with the power of disuniting all other thoughts from his mind, whenever he wished to indulge in thinking of any particular subject; and so firmly did he believe, by this abstracting power, that the objects of his compositions were before him in his mind's eye, that he frequently believed them to be speaking to him. This I shall now illustrate by the following narrative.
Blake, after deeply perplexing himself as to the mode of accomplishing the publication of his illustrated songs, without their being subject to the expense of letterpress, his brother Robert stood before him in one of his visionary imaginations, and so decidedly directed him in the way in which he ought to proceed, that he immediately followed his advice, by writing his poetry, and drawing his marginal subjects of embellishments in outline upon the copper-plate with an impervious liquid, and then eating the plain parts or lights away with aqua-fortis considerably below them, so that the outlines were left as a stereotype. The plates in this state were then printed in any tint that he wished, to enable him or Mrs. Blake to color the marginal figures up by hand in imitation of drawings.
The following are some of his works produced in this manner, viz.; 'Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, The Book of Jerusalem,' consisting of an hundred plates, 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,' 'Europe and America'; and another work, which is now very uncommon, a pretty little series of plates, entitled 'Gate of Paradise.'
Blake, like those artists absorbed in a beloved study, cared not for money beyond its use for the ensuing day; and indeed he and his 'beloved' were so reciprocally frugal in their expenses, that, never sighing for either gilded vessels, silver-laced attendants, or turtle's livers, they were contented with the simplest repast, and a little answered their purpose. Yet, notwithstanding all their economy, Dame Fortune being, as it is pretty well known to the world, sometimes a fickle jade, they, as well as thousands more, have had their intercepting clouds.
As it is not my intention to follow them through their lives, I shall confine myself to a relation of a few other anecdotes of this happy pair; and as they are connected with the Arts, in my opinion they ought not to be lost, as they may be considered worthy the attention of future biographers.
For his marginal illustrations of 'Young's Night Thoughts,' which possess a great power of imagination, he received so despicably low a price, that Flaxman, whose heart was ever warm, was determined to serve him whenever an opportunity offered itself; and with his usual voice of sympathy, introduced him to his friend Hayley, with whom it was no new thing to give pleasure, capricious as he was. This gentleman immediately engaged him to engrave the plates for his quarto edition of 'The Life of Cowper,' published in 1803-4; and for this purpose he went down to Felpham, in order to be near that highly respected _Hermit._
Here he took a cottage, for which he paid twenty pounds a year, and was not, as has been reported, entertained in a house belonging to Mr. Hayley rent-free. During his stay he drew several portraits, and could have had full employment in that department of the Art; but he was born to follow his own inclinations, and was willing to rely upon a reward for the labours of the day.
Mr. Flaxman, knowing me to be a collector of autographs, among many others, gave me the following letter, which he received from Blake immediately after his arrival at Felpham, in which he styles him.
'DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,
'We are safe arrived at our cottage, which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It is a perfect model for cottages, and, I think, for palaces of magnificence; only enlarging, not altering, its proportions, and adding ornaments and not principals. Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple without intricacy, it seems to be the spontaneous effusion of humanity, congenial to the wants of man. No other-formed house can ever please me so well; nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be improved either in beauty or use.
'Mr. Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have begun to work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapors; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen, and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace.
'Our journey was very pleasant; and though we had a great deal of luggage, no grumbling. All was cheerfulness and good-humour on the road, and yet we could not arrive at our cottage before half-past eleven at night, owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, and as many different drivers. We set out between six and seven in the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes, and portfolios full of prints.
'And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity, before my mortal life; and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality? The Lord, our father, will do for us and with us according to his Divine will for our good.
'You, O dear Flaxman! are a sublime Archangel, my friend and companion from eternity. In the Divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days before this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal-vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity which can never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of Heaven from each other.
'Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold; and believe me for ever to remain,
'Your grateful and affectionate,
'WILLIAM BLAKE.
'Felpham, _Sept._ 21, 1800.
'Sunday morning.'
In a copy of Hayley's 'Triumphs of Temper,' illustrated by Stothard, which had been the one belonging to the Author's son, and which he gave after his death to Blake, are these verses in MS. by the hand of the donor:
'Accept, my gentle visionary, Blake, Whose thoughts are fanciful and kindly mild; Accept, and fondly keep for friendship's sake, This favor'd vision, my poetic child.
'Rich in more grace than fancy ever won, To thy most tender mind this book will be, For it belong'd to my departed son; So from an angel it descends to thee.
W. H.
_July_, 1800.'[3]
Upon his return from Felpham, he addressed the public, in page 3 of his Book of Jerusalem, in these words, 'After my three years' slumber on the banks of the ocean, I again display my giant-forms to the public,' etc.
Some of the 'giant-forms,' as he calls them, are mighty and grand, and if I were to compare them to the style of any preceding artist, Michel Angelo, Sir Joshua's favorite, would be the one; and were I to select a specimen as a corroboration of this opinion, I should instance the figure personifying the 'Ancient of Days,' the frontispiece to his 'Europe, a Prophecy.' In my mind, his knowledge of drawing, as well as design, displayed in this figure, must at once convince the informed reader of his extraordinary abilities.
I am now under the painful necessity of relating an event promulgated in two different ways by two different parties; and as I entertain a high respect for the talents of both persons concerned, I shall, in order to steer clear of giving umbrage to the supporters of either, leave the reader to draw his own conclusions, unbiassed by any insinuation whatever of mine.
An engraver of the name of Cromek, a man who endeavored to live by speculating upon the talents of others, purchased a series of drawings of Blake, illustrative of Blair's 'Grave,' which he had begun with a view of engraving and publishing. These were sold to Mr. Cromek for the insignificant sum of one guinea each, with the promise, and indeed under the express agreement, that Blake should be employed to engrave them; a task to which he looked forward with anxious delight. Instead of this negotiation being carried into effect, the drawings, to his great mortification, were put into the hands of Schiavonetti. During the time this artist was thus employed, Cromek had asked Blake--what work he had in mind to execute next. The unsuspecting artist not only told him, but without the least reserve showed him the designs sketched out for a fresco picture; the subject Chaucer's 'Pilgrimage to Canterbury'; with which Mr. Cromek appeared highly delighted. Shortly after this, Blake discovered that Stothard, a brother-artist to whom he had been extremely kind in early days, had been employed to paint a picture, not only of the same subject, but in some instances similar to the fresco sketch which he had shown to Mr. Cromek. The picture painted by Stothard became the property of Mr. Cromek, who published proposals for an engraving from it, naming Bromley as the engraver to be employed. However, in a short time, that artist's name was withdrawn, and Schiavonetti's substituted, who lived only to complete the etching; the plate being finished afterwards by at least three different hands. Blake, highly indignant at this treatment, immediately set to work, and proposed an engraving from his fresco picture, which he publicly exhibited in his brother James's shop-window, at the corner of Broad Street, accompanied with an address to the public, stating what he considered to be improper conduct.
So much on the side of Blake.[4] On the part of Stothard, the story runs thus. Mr. Cromek had agreed with that artist to employ him upon a picture of the Procession of Chaucer's Pilgrimage to Canterbury, for which he first agreed to pay him sixty guineas, but in order to enable him to finish it in a more exquisite manner, promised him forty more, with an intention of engaging Bromley to engrave it; but in consequence of some occurrence, his name was withdrawn, and Schiavonetti was employed. During the time Stothard was painting the picture, Blake called to see it, and appeared so delighted with it, that Stothard, sincerely wishing to please an old friend with whom he had lived so cordially for many years, and from whose works he always most liberally declared he had received much pleasure and edification, expressed a wish to introduce his portrait as one of the party, as a mark of esteem.
Mr. Hoppner, in a letter to a friend, dated May 30, 1807, says of it:
'This intelligent group is rendered still more interesting by the charm of coloring, which though simple is strong, and most harmoniously distributed throughout the picture. The landscape has a deep-toned brightness that accords most admirably with the figures; and the painter has ingeniously contrived to give a value to a common scene and very ordinary forms, that would hardly be found, by unlearned eyes, in the natural objects. He has expressed too, with great vivacity and truth, the freshness of morning, at that season when Nature herself is most fresh and blooming--the Spring; and it requires no great stretch of fancy to imagine we perceive the influence of it on the cheeks of the Fair Wife of Bath, and her rosy companions, the Monk and Friar.
'In respect of the execution of the various parts of this pleasing design, it is not too much praise to say, that it is wholly free from that vice which painters term _manner_; and it has this peculiarity beside, which I do not remember to have seen in any picture, ancient or modern, namely, that it bears no mark of the period in which it was painted, but might very well pass for the work of some able artist of the time of Chaucer. This effect is not, I believe, the result of any association of ideas connected with the costume, but appears in primitive simplicity, and the total absence of all affectation, either of coloring or pencilling.
'Having attempted to describe a few of the beauties of this captivating performance, it remains only for me to mention one great defect. The picture is, notwithstanding appearances, _a modern one._ But if you can divest yourself of the general prejudice that exists against contemporary talents, you will see a work that would have done honor to any school, at any period.'[5]
In 1810, Stothard, to his great surprise, found that Blake had engraved and published a plate of the same size, in some respects bearing a similarity to his own.[6] Such are the outlines of this controversy.
Blake's ideas were often truly entertaining, and after he had conveyed them to paper, his whimsical and novel descriptions frequently surpassed his delineations; for instance, that of his picture of the Transformation of the Flea to the form of a Man, is extremely curious. This personification, which he denominated a Cupper, or Blood-sucker, is covered with coat of armor, similar to the case of the flea, and is represented slowly pacing in the night, with a thorn attached to his right hand, and a cup in the other, as if ready to puncture the first person whose blood he might fancy, like Satan prowling about to seek whom he could devour. Blake said of the flea, that were that lively little fellow the size of an elephant, he was quite sure, from the calculations he had made of his wonderful strength, that he could bound from Dover to Calais in one leap.[7] Whatever may be the public opinion hereafter of Blake's talents, when his enemies are dead, I will not presume to predict;[8] but this I am certain of, that on the score of industry at least, many artists must strike to him. Application was a faculty so engendered in him that he took little bodily exercise to keep up his health: he had few evening walks and little rest from labour, for his mind was ever fixed upon his art, nor did he at any time indulge in a game of chess, draughts, or backgammon; such amusements, considered as relaxations by artists in general, being to him distractions. His greatest pleasure was derived from the Bible--a work ever at his hand, and which he often assiduously consulted in several languages. Had he fortunately lived till the next year's exhibition at Somerset House, the public would then have been astonished at his exquisite finishing of a Fresco picture of the Last Judgment, containing upwards of one thousand figures, many of them wonderfully conceived and grandly drawn. The lights of this extraordinary performance have the appearance of silver and gold; but upon Mrs. Blake's assuring me that there was no silver used, I found, upon a closer examination, that a blue wash had been passed over those parts of the gilding which receded, and the lights of the forward objects, which were also of gold, were heightened with a warm color, to give the appearance of the two metals.
It is most certain, that the uninitiated eye was incapable of selecting the beauties of Blake; his effusions were not generally felt; and in this opinion I am borne out in the frequent assertions of Fuseli and Flaxman. It would, therefore, be unreasonable to expect the booksellers to embark in publications, not likely to meet remuneration. Circumstanced, then, as Blake was, approaching to threescore years and ten, in what way was he to persevere in his labours? Alas, he knew not! until the liberality of Mr. Linnell, a brother-artist of eminence, whose discernment could well appreciate those parts of his designs which deserved perpetuity, enabled him to proceed and execute in comfort a series of twenty-one plates, illustrative of the Book of Job. This was the last work he completed, upon the merits of which he received the highest congratulations from the following Royal Academicians: Sir Thomas Lawrence, Mr. Baily, Mr. Philips, Mr. Chantrey, Mr. James Ward, Mr. Arnald, Mr. Collins, Mr. Westmacott, and many other artists of eminence.
As to Blake's system of coloring, which I have not hitherto noticed, it was in many instances most beautifully prismatic. In this branch of the art he often acknowledged Apelles to have been his tutor, who was, he said, so much pleased with his style, that once when he appeared before him, among many of his observations, he delivered the following:--'You certainly possess my system of coloring; and I now wish you to draw my person, which has hitherto been untruly delineated.'
I must own that until I was favoured by Mr. Upcott with a sight of some of Blake's works, several of which I had never seen, I was not so fully aware of his great depth of knowledge in coloring. Of these most interesting specimens of his art, which are now extremely rare, and rendered invaluable by his death, as it is impossible for any one to color them with his mind, should the plates remain, Mr. Richard Thomson, another truly kind friend, has favoured me with the following descriptive lists.
SONGS OF EXPERIENCE. The author and printer, W. Blake. Small octavo; seventeen plates, including the title-page. Frontispiece, a winged infant mounted on the shoulders of a youth. On the title-page, two figures weeping over two crosses.
_Introduction._ Four Stanzas on a cloud, with a night-sky behind, and beneath, a figure of Earth stretched on a mantle.
_Earths Answer._ Five Stanzas; a serpent on the ground beneath.
_The Clod, and the Pebble._ Three Stanzas; above, a headpiece of four sheep and two oxen; beneath, a duck and reptiles.
_A Poison Tree._ Four Stanzas: The tree stretches up the right side of the page; and beneath, a dead body killed by its influence.
_The Fly._ Five Stanzas. Beneath, a female figure with two children.
_Holy Thursday._ Four Stanzas. Head-piece, a female figure discovering a dead child. On the right-hand margin a mother and two children lamenting the loss of an infant which lies beneath. Perhaps this is one of the most tasteful of the set.
_The Chimney-Sweeper._ Three Stanzas. Beneath, a figure of one walking in snow towards an open door.
_London._ Four Stanzas. Above, a child leading an old man through the street; on the right hand, a figure warming itself at a fire. If in any instance Mr. Blake has copied himself, it is in the figure of the old man upon this plate, whose position appears to have been a favorite one with him.
_The Tiger._ Six Stanzas. On the right-hand margin, the trunk of a tree; and beneath, a tiger walking.
_A Little Boy Lost._ Six Stanzas. Ivy-leaves on the right hand, and beneath, weeping figure before a fire, in which the verses state that the child had been burned by a Saint.
_The Human Abstract._ Six Stanzas. The trunk of a tree on the right-hand margin, and beneath, an old man in white drawing a veil over his head.
_The Angel._ Four Stanzas. Head-piece, a female figure lying beneath a tree, and pushing from her a winged boy.
_My Pretty Rose-Tree._ Two Stanzas: succeeded by a small vignette, of a figure weeping, and another lying reclined at the foot of a tree. Beneath, are two verses more, entitled, _Ah! Sun-Flower_; and a single stanza, headed _The Lily._
_Nurse's Song._ Two Stanzas. Beneath, a girl with a youth and a female child at a door surrounded by vine-leaves.
_A Little Girl Lost._ Seven Stanzas; interspersed with birds and leaves, the trunk of a tree on the right-hand margin.
The whole of these plates are colored in imitation of fresco. The poetry of these songs is wild, irregular, and highly mystical, but of no great degree of elegance or excellence, and their prevailing feature is a tone of complaint of the misery of mankind.
AMERICA: _a Prophecy._ Lambeth: Printed by William Blake, in the year 1793; folio; eighteen plates or twenty pages, including the frontispiece and title-page. After a Preludium of thirty-seven lines commences the Prophecy of 226, which are interspersed with numerous headpieces, vignettes, and tail-pieces, usually stretching along the left-hand margin and enclosing the text; which sometimes appears written on a cloud, and at others environed by flames and water. Of the latter subject a very fine specimen is shown upon page 13, where the tail-piece represents the bottom of the sea, with various fishes coming together to prey upon a dead body. The head-piece is another dead body lying on the surface of the waters, with an eagle feeding upon it with outstretched wings. Another instance of Mr. Blake's favorite figure of the old man entering at Death's door, is contained on page 12 of this poem. The subject of the text is a conversation between the Angel of Albion, the Angels of the Thirteen States, Washington, and some others of the American generals, and 'Red Ore,' the spirit of war and evil. The verses are without rhyme, and most resemble hexameters, though they are by no means exact; and the expressions are mystical in a very high degree.
EUROPE: _a Prophecy._ Lambeth: Printed by William Blake, 1794; folio; seventeen plates on the leaves, inclusive of the frontispiece and title-page. Colored to imitate the ancient fresco painting. The Preludium consists of thirty-three lines, in stanzas without rhyme, and the Prophecy of two hundred and tight; the decorations to which are larger than most of those in the former book, and approach nearest to the character of paintings, since, in several instances, they occupy the whole page. The frontispiece is an uncommonly fine specimen of art, and approaches almost to the sublimity of Raffaelle or Michel Angelo. It represents 'The Ancient of Days,' in an orb of light surrounded by dark clouds, as referred to in Proverbs VIII. 27, stooping down with an enormous pair of compasses to describe the destined orb of the world,[9] 'when he set a compass upon the face of the earth.'
'In His hand He took the golden compasses, prepar'd In God's eternal store, to circumscribe This universe, and all created things: One foot he centred, and the other turn'd Round through the vast profundity obscure; And said, "Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, This be thy just circumference, O World!"'
Paradise Lost, book VII. line 236.
Another splendid composition in this work are the two angels pouring out the black-spotted plague upon England, on page 9; in which the fore-shortening of the legs, the grandeur of their positions, and the harmony with which they are adapted to each other and to their curved trumpets, are perfectly admirable. The subject-matter of the work is written in the same wild and singular measures as the preceding, and describes, in mystical language, the terrors of plague and anarchy which overspread England during the slumbers of Enitharmon for eighteen hundred years; upon whose awaking, the ferocious spirit Ore burst into flames 'in the vineyards of red France.' At the end of this poem are seven separate engravings on folio pages, without letterpress, which are colored like the former part of the work, with a degree of splendor and force, as almost to resemble sketches in oil-colors. The finest of these are a figure of an angel standing in the sun, a group of three furies surrounded by clouds and fire, and a figure of a man sitting beneath a tree in the deepest dejection; all of which are peculiarly remarkable for their strength and splendor of coloring. Another publication by Mr. Blake consisted only of a small quarto volume of twenty-three engravings of various shapes and sizes, colored as before, some of which are of extraordinary effect and beauty. The best plates in this series are--the first of an aged man, with a white heard sweeping the ground, and writing in a book with each hand, naked; a human figure pressing out his brain through his ears; and the great sea-serpent; but perhaps the best is a figure sinking in a stormy sea at sunset, the splendid light of which, and the foam upon the black waves, are almost magical effects of coloring. Beneath the first design is engraved '_Lambeth, printed by W. Blake_, 1794.'
Blake's modes of preparing his ground, and laying them over his panels for painting, mixing his colors, and manner of working, were those which he considered to have been practized by the earliest fresco painters, whose productions still remain, in numerous instances, vivid and permanently fresh. His ground was a mixture of whiting and carpenter's glue, which he passed over several times in thin coatings: his colors he ground himself, and also united them with the same sort of glue, but in a much weaker state. He would, in the course of painting a picture, pass a very thin transparent wash of glue-water over the whole of the parts he had worked upon, and then proceed with his finishing.[10]
This process I have tried, and find, by using my mixture warm, that I can produce the same texture as possessed in Blake's pictures of the Last Judgment, and others of his productions, particularly in Varley's curious picture of the personified Flea. Blake preferred mixing his colors with carpenter's glue, to gum, on account of the latter cracking in the sun, and becoming humid in moist weather. The glue-mixture stands the sun, and change of atmosphere has no effect upon it. Every carpenter knows that if a broken piece of stick be joined with good glue, the stick will seldom break again in the glued parts.
That Blake had many secret modes of working, both as a colorist and an engraver, I have no doubt. His method of eating away the plain copper, and leaving his drawn lines of his subjects and his words as stereotype, is, in my mind, perfectly original. Mrs. Blake is in possession of the secret, and she ought to receive something considerable for its communication, as I am quite certain it may be used to the greatest advantage both to artists and literary characters in general.
That Blake's colored plates have more effect than others where gum has been used, is, in my opinion, the fact, and I shall rest my assertion upon those beautiful specimens in the possession of Mr. Upcott, colored purposely for that gentleman's godfather, Ozias Humphrey, Esq., to whom Blake wrote the following interesting letter.
TO OZIAS HUMPHREY, ESQ.
'The design of The Last Judgment, which I have completed by your recommendation for the Countess of Egremont, it is necessary to give some account of; and its various parts ought to be described, for the accommodation of those who give it the honor of their attention.
'Christ seated on the Throne of Judgment: the Heavens in clouds rolling before him and around him, like a scroll ready to be consumed in the fires of the Angels; who descend before his feet, with their four trumpets sounding to the four winds.
'Beneath, the Earth is convulsed with the labours of the Resurrection. In the caverns of the earth is the Dragon with seven heads and ten horns, chained by two Angels; and above his cavern, on the earth's surface, is the Harlot, also seized and bound by two Angels with chains, while her palaces are falling into ruins, and her counsellors and warriors are descending into the abyss, in wailing and despair.
'Hell opens beneath the harlot's seat on the left hand, into which the wicked are descending.
'The right hand of the design is appropriated to the Resurrection of the Just: the left hand of the design is appropriated to the Resurrection and Fall of the Wicked.
'Immediately before the Throne of Christ are Adam and Eve, kneeling in humiliation, as representatives of the whole human race; Abraham and Moses kneel on each side beneath them; from the cloud on which Eve kneels, and beneath Moses, and from the tables of stone which utter lightning, is seen Satan wound round by the Serpent, and falling headlong; the Pharisees appear on the left hand pleading their own righteousness before the Throne of Christ: The Book of Death is opened on clouds by two Angels; many groups of figures are falling from before the throne, and from the sea of fire, which flows before the steps of the throne; on which are seen the seven Lamps of the Almighty, burning before the throne. Many figures chained and bound together fall through the air, and some are scourged by Spirits with flames of fire into the abyss of Hell, which opens to receive them beneath, on the left hand of the harlot's seat; where others are howling and descending into the flames, and in the act of dragging each other into Hell, and of contending in fighting with each other on the brink of perdition.
'Before the Throne of Christ on the right hand, the Just, in humiliation and in exultation, rise through the air, with their Children and Families; some of whom are bowing before the Book of Life, which is opened by two Angels on clouds: many groups arise with exultation; among them is a figure crowned with stars, and the moon beneath her feet, with six infants around her, she represents the Christian Church. The green hills appear beneath; with the graves of the blessed, which are seen bursting with their births of immortality; parents and children embrace and arise together, and in exulting attitudes tell each other that the New Jerusalem is ready to descend upon earth; they arise upon the air rejoicing; others newly awaked from the graves, stand upon the earth embracing and shouting to the Lamb, who cometh in the clouds with power and great glory.
'The whole upper part of the design is a view of Heaven opened; around the Throne of Christ, four living creatures filled with eyes, attended by seven angels with seven vials of the wrath of God, and above these seven Angels with the seven trumpets compose the cloud, which by its rolling away displays the opening seats of the Blessed, on the right and the left of which are seen the four-and-twenty Elders seated on thrones to judge the dead.
'Behind the seat and Throne of Christ appears the Tabernacle with its veil opened, the Candlestick on the right, the Table with Show-bread on the left, and in the midst, the Cross in place of the Ark, with the two Cherubim bowing over it.
'On the right hand of the Throne of Christ is Baptism, on his left is the Lord's Supper--the two introducers into Eternal Life. Women with infants approach the figure of an aged Apostle, which represents Baptism; and on the left hand the Lord's Supper is administered by Angels, from the hands of another aged Apostle; these kneel on each side of the Throne, which is surrounded by a glory: in the glory many infants appear, representing Eternal Creation flowing from the Divine Humanity in Jesus; who opens the Scroll of Judgment upon his knees before the living and the dead.
'Such is the design which you, my dear Sir, have been the cause of my producing, and which, but for you, might have slept till the Last Judgment.
'WILLIAM BLAKE.
'_January_ 18, 1808.'
Blake and his wife were known to have lived so happily together, that they might unquestionably have been registered at Dunmow. 'Their hopes and fears were to each other known,' and their days and nights were passed in each other's company, for he always painted, drew, engraved, and studied, in the same room where they grilled, boiled, stewed, and slept; and so steadfastly attentive was he to his beloved tasks, that for the space of two years he had never once been out of his house; and his application was often so incessant, that in the middle of the night, he would, after thinking deeply upon a particular subject, leap from his bed and write for two hours or more; and for many years he made a constant practice of lighting the fire, and putting on the kettle for breakfast before his Kate awoke.
During his last illness, which was occasioned by the gall mixing with his blood, he was frequently bolstered-up in his bed to complete his drawings, for his intended illustration of Dante; an author so great a favorite with him, that though he agreed with Fuseli and Flaxman, in thinking Carey's translation superior to all others, yet, at the age of sixty-three years, he learned the Italian language purposely to enjoy Dante in the highest possible way. For this intended work, he produced seven engraved plates of an imperial quarto size, and nearly one hundred finished drawings of a size considerably larger; which will do equal justice to his wonderful mind, and the liberal heart of their possessor, who engaged him upon so delightful a task at a time when few persons would venture to give him employment, and whose kindness softened, for the remainder of his life, his lingering bodily sufferings, which he was seen to support with the most Christian fortitude.
On the day of his death, August 12,[11] 1827, he composed and uttered songs to his Maker so sweetly to the ear of his Catherine, that when she stood to hear him, he, looking upon her most affectionately, said, 'My beloved, they are not mine--no--they are not mine.' He expired at six in the evening, with the most cheerful serenity. Some short time before his death, Mrs. Blake asked him where he should like to be buried, and whether he would have the Dissenting Minister, or the Clergyman of the Church of England, to read the service: his answers were, that as far as his own feelings were concerned, they might bury him where she pleased, adding, that as his father, mother, aunt, and brother were buried in Bunhill Bow, perhaps it would be better to lie there, but as to service, he should wish for that of the Church of England.
His hearse was followed by two mourning-coaches, attended by private friends: Calvert, Richmond, Tatham, and his brother, promising young artists, to whom he had given instructions in the Arts, were of the number. Tatham, ill as he was, travelled ninety miles to attend the funeral of one for whom, next to his own family, he held the highest esteem. Blake died in his sixty-ninth year, in the back-room of the first-floor of No. 3 Fountain Court, Strand, and was buried in Bunhill Fields, on the 17th of August, at the distance of about twenty-five feet from the north wall, numbered eighty.
Limited as Blake was in his pecuniary circumstances, his beloved Kate survives him clear of even a sixpenny debt; and in the fullest belief that the remainder of her days will be rendered tolerable by the sale of the few copies of her husband's works, which she will dispose of at the original price of publication; in order to enable the collector to add to the weight of his bookshelves, without being solicited to purchase, out of compassion, those specimens of her husband's talents which they ought to possess.
EXTRACT FROM 'A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY'
[1784].--This year Mr. Flaxman, who then lived in Wardour Street, introduced me to one of his early patrons, the Rev. Henry Mathew, of Percy Chapel, Charlotte Street, which was built for him; he was also afternoon preacher at Saint Martin's-in-the-Fields. At that gentleman's house, in Rathbone Place, I became acquainted with Mrs. Mathew and her son. At that lady's most agreeable conversaziones I first met the late William Blake, the artist, to whom she and Mr. Flaxman had been truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and allowed by most of the visitors to possess original and extraordinary merit.'[12]
[Footnote 1: The whole copy of this little work, entitled 'Poetical Sketches, by W. B.,' containing seventy pages, octavo, bearing the date of 1783, was given to Blake to sell to friends, or publish, as he might think proper.]
[Footnote 2: A friend has favoured me with the following anecdotes, which he received from Blake, respecting his courtship. He states that 'Our Artist fell in love with a lively little girl, who allowed him to say everything that was loving, but would not listen to his overtures on the score of matrimony. He was lamenting this in the house of a friend, when a generous-hearted lass declared that she pitied him from her heart. "Do you pity me?" asked Blake. "Yes; I do, most sincerely."--"Then," said he, "I love you for that."--"Well," said the honest girl, "and I love you." The consequence was, they were married, and lived the happiest of lives.']
[Footnote 3: I copied the above from the book now in the possession of Mrs. Blake.]
[Footnote 4: In 1809, Blake exhibited sixteen poetical and historical inventions, in his brother's first-floor in Broad Street; eleven pictures in fresco, professed to be painted according to the ancient method, and seven drawings, of which an explanatory catalogue was published, and is perhaps the most curious of its kind ever written. At page 7, the description of his fresco painting of Geoffrey Chaucer's Pilgrimage commences. This picture, which is larger than the print, is now in the possession of Thomas Butts, Esq., a gentleman friendly to Blake, and who is in possession of a considerable number of his works.]
[Footnote 5: See the 'Artist,' by Prince Hoare, Esq., No. 13, vol. I. p. 13.]
[Footnote 6: I must do Mr. Stothard the justice to declare, that the very first time I saw him after he had read the announcement of Blake's death, he spoke in the handsomest terms of his talents, and informed me that Blake made a remarkably correct and fine drawing of the head of Queen Philippa, from her monumental effigy in Westminster Abbey, for Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, engraved by Basire. The collectors of Stothard's numerous and elegant designs will recollect the name of Blake as the engraver of several plates in the Novelist's Magazine, the Poetical Magazine, and also others for a work entitled the Wit's Magazine, from drawings produced by the same artist. Trotter, the engraver, who received instructions from Blake, and who was a pattern-draughtsman to the calico-printers, introduced his friend Stothard to Blake, and their attachment for each other coutinued most cordially to exist in the opinion of the public, until they produced their rival pictures of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage.]
[Footnote 7: This interesting little picture is painted in fresco. It is now the property of John Varley, the artist, whose landscapes will ever be esteemed as some of the finest productions in Art, and who may fairly be considered as one of the founders of the Society of Artists in Water-Colors; the annual exhibitions of which continue to surpass those of the preceding seasons.]
[Footnote 8: Blake's talent is not to be seen in his engravings from the designs of other artists, though he certainly honestly endeavored to copy the beauties of Stothard, Flaxman, and those masters set before him by the few publishers who employed him; but his own engravings from his own mind are the productions which the man of true feeling must ever admire, and the predictions of Fuseli and Flaxman may hereafter be verified 'That a time will come when Blake's finest works will be as much sought after and treasured up in the portfolios of men of mind, as those of Michel Angelo are at present.']
[Footnote 9: He was inspired with the splendid grandeur of this figure, by the vision which he declared hovered over his head at the top of his staircase; and he has been frequently heard to say, that it made a more powerful impression upon his mind than all he had ever been visited by. This subject was such a favorite with him, that he always bestowed more time and enjoyed greater pleasure when coloring the print, than anything he ever produced.
Mr. F. Tatham employed him to tint an impression of it, for which I have heard he paid him the truly liberal sum of three guineas and a half. I say liberal, though the specimen is worth any price, because the sum was so considerably beyond what Blake generally had been accustomed to receive as a remuneration for his extraordinary talents. Upon this truly inestimable impression, which I have now before me, Blake worked when bolstered-up in his bed only a few days before he died; and my friend F. Tatham has just informed me, that after Blake had frequently touched upon it, and had as frequently held it at a distance, he threw it from him, and with an air of exulting triumph exclaimed, 'There, that will do! I cannot mend it.' However, this was not his last production; for immediately after he had made the above declaration to his beloved Kate, upon whom his eyes were steadfastly fixed, he vociferated, 'Stay! keep as you are! _you_ have ever been an _angel_ to me, I will draw you'; and he actually made a most spirited fineness of her, though within so short a period of his earthly termination.]
[Footnote 10: Loutherbourgh was also, in _his_ way, very ingenious in his contrivances. To oblige his friend Garrick, he enriched a drama, entitled '_The Christmas Tale_,' with scenery painted by himself, and introduced such novelty and brilliancy of effect, as formed a new era in that species of art. This he accomplished by means of differently colored silks placed before the lamps at the front of the stage, and by the lights behind the side scenes. The same effects were used for distance and atmosphere. As for instance, Harlequin in a fog was produced by tiffany hung between the audience and himself. Mr. Seguire, the father of the Keeper of the King's Pictures, and those of the National Gallery, purchased of Mr. Loutherbourgh ten small designs for the scenery of Omiah, for which scenes the manager paid him one thousand pounds. Mr. Loutherbourgh never would leave any paper or designs at the theatre, nor would he ever allow any one to see what he intended to produce; as he secretly held small cards in his hand, which he now and then referred to in order to assist him in his recollections of his small drawings.]
[Footnote 11: Not the 13th, as has been stated by several editors who have noticed his death.]
[Footnote 12: A time will come when the numerous, though now very rare works of Blake (in consequence of his taking very few impressions from the plates before they were rubbed out to enable him to use them for other subjects), will be sought after with the most intense avidity. He was considered by Stothard and Flaxman (and will be by those of congenial minds, if we can reasonably expect such again) with their highest admiration. These artists allowed him their utmost unqualified praise, and were ever anxious to recommend him and his productions to the patrons of the Arts; but, alas! they were not sufficiently appreciated as to enable Blake, as every one could wish, to provide an independence for his surviving partner, Kate, who adored his memory.]
(VIII.) LIFE OF BLAKE BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM (1830)
[Allan Cunningham's Life of Blake occupies pp. 142-179 of the second volume of his _Lives of the most eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects._ (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, MDCCCXXX.) It is largely indebted to Smith, but contains a few anecdotes not found elsewhere, and probably derived from Varley and Linnell. In a letter to Linnell, printed in Mr. Story's Life, Cunningham says that 'much valuable information' has been received from Varley, and asks for more, adding, with characteristic impertinence: 'I know Blake's character, for I knew the man. I shall make a _judicious_ use of my materials, and be merciful where sympathy is needed.' He reproduces the Phillips portrait of Blake, which had been engraved by Schiavonetti for Blair's _Grave_, in a less showy and more lifelike engraving by W. C. Edwards.]
Painting, like poetry, has followers, the body of whose genius is light compared to the length of its wings, and who, rising above the ordinary sympathies of our nature, are, like Napoleon, betrayed by a star which no eye can see save their own. To this rare class belonged William Blake.
He was the second son of James Blake and Catherine his wife, and born on the 28th of November, 1757, in 28 Broad Street, Carnaby Market, London. His father, a respectable hosier, caused him to be educated for his own business, but the love of art came early upon the boy; he neglected the figures of arithmetic for those of Raphael and Reynolds; and his worthy parents often wondered how a child of theirs should have conceived a love for such unsubstantial vanities. The boy, it seems, was privately encouraged by his mother. The love of designing and sketching grew upon him, and he desired anxiously to be an artist. His father began to be pleased with the notice which his son obtained--and to fancy that a painter's study might after all be a fitter place than a hosier's shop for one who drew designs on the backs of all the shop bills, and made sketches on the counter. He consulted an eminent artist, who asked so large a sum for instruction, that the prudent shopkeeper hesitated, and young Blake declared he would prefer being an engraver--a profession which would bring bread at least, and through which he would be connected with painting. It was indeed time to dispose of him. In addition to his attachment to art, he had displayed poetic symptoms--scraps of paper and the blank leaves of books were found covered with groups and stanzas. When his father saw sketches at the top of the sheet and verses at the bottom, he took him away to Basire, the engraver, in Green Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and bound him apprentice for seven years. He was then fourteen years old.
It is told of Blake that at ten years of age he became an artist, and at twelve a poet. Of his boyish pencillings I can find no traces--but of his early intercourse with the Muse the proof lies before me in seventy pages of verse, written, he says, between his twelfth and his twentieth year, and published, by the advice of friends, when he was thirty. There are songs, ballads, and a dramatic poem; rude sometimes and melodious, but full of fine thought and deep and peculiar feeling. To those who love poetry for the music of its bells, these seventy pages will sound harsh and dissonant; but by others they will be more kindly looked upon. John Flaxman, a judge in all things of a poetic nature, was so touched with many passages, that he not only counseled their publication, but joined with a gentleman of the name of Matthews in the expense, and presented the printed sheets to the artist to dispose of for his own advantage. One of these productions is an address to the Muses--a common theme, but sung in no common manner.
'Whether on Ida's shady brow, Or in the chambers of the east, The chambers of the sun, that now From ancient melody have ceas'd;
Whether in heaven ye wander fair, Or the green corners of the earth, Or the blue regions of the air, Where the melodious winds have birth;
Whether on crystal rocks ye rove, Beneath the bosom of the sea, Wandering in many a coral grove, Fair Nine! forsaking poesie;
How have ye left the ancient love, That Bards of old enjoyed in you;-- The languid strings now scarcely move, The sound is forced--the notes are few.'
The little poem called 'The Tiger' has been admired for the force and vigour of its thoughts by poets of high name. Many could weave smoother lines--few could stamp such living images.
'Tiger! Tiger! burning bright In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Framed thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies Burned the fervour of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire-- What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? When thy heart began to beat, What dread hand formed thy dread feet?
What the hammer! what the chain! Formed thy strength and forged thy brain? What the anvil! What dread grasp Dared thy deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spheres, And sprinkled heaven with shining tears, Did he smile, his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?'
In the dramatic poem of King Edward the Third there are many nervous lines, and even whole passages of high merit. The structure of the verse is often defective, and the arrangement inharmonious; but before the ear is thoroughly offended, it is soothed by some touch of deep melody and poetic thought. The princes and earls of England are conferring together on the eve of the battle of Cressy--the Black Prince takes Chandos aside, and says--
'Now we're alone, John Chandos, I'll unburthen And breathe my hopes into the burning air-- Where thousand Deaths are posting up and down, Commissioned to this fatal field of Cressy: Methinks I see them arm my gallant soldiers,
And gird the sword upon each thigh, and fit The shining helm, and string each stubborn bow, And dancing to the neighing of the steeds;--Methinks the shout begins--the battle burns;--Methinks I see them perch on English crests, And breathe the wild flame of fierce war upon The thronged enemy.'
In the same high poetic spirit Sir Walter Manny converses with a genuine old English warrior, Sir Thomas Dagworth.
'O, Dagworth!--France is sick!--the very sky, Though sunshine light, it seems to me as pale As is the fainting man on his death-bed, Whose face is shown by light of one weak taper-- It makes me sad and sick unto the heart; Thousands must fall to-day.'
Sir Thomas answers.
'Thousands of souls must leave this prison-house To be exalted to those heavenly fields Where songs of triumph, psalms of victory, Where peace, and joy, and love, and calm content Sit singing on the azure clouds, and strew The flowers of heaven upon the banquet table. Bind ardent hope upon your feet, like shoes, And put the robe of preparation on. The table, it is spread in shining heaven. Let those who fight, fight in good steadfastness; And those who fall shall rise in victory.'
I might transcribe from these modest and unnoticed pages many such passages. It would be unfair not to mention that the same volume contains some wild and incoherent prose, in which we may trace more than the dawning of those strange, mystical, and mysterious fancies on which he subsequently misemployed his pencil. There is much that is weak, and something that is strong, and a great deal that is wild and mad, and all so strangely mingled, that no meaning can be assigned to it; it seems like a lamentation over the disasters which came on England during the reign of King John.
Though Blake lost himself a little in the enchanted region of song, he seems not to have neglected to make himself master of the graver, or to have forgotten his love of designs and sketches. He was a dutiful servant to Basire, and he studied occasionally under Flaxman and Fuseli; but it was his chief delight to retire to the solitude of his chamber, and there make drawings, and illustrate these with verses, to be hung up together in his mother's chamber. He was always at work; he called amusement idleness, sight-seeing vanity, and money-making the ruin of all high aspirations. 'Were I to love money,' he said, 'I should lose all power of thought! desire of gain deadens the genius of man. I might roll in wealth and ride in a golden chariot, were I to listen to the voice of parsimony. My business is not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes, expressing godlike sentiments.' The day was given to the graver, by which he earned enough to maintain himself respectably; and he bestowed his evenings upon painting and poetry, and intertwined these so closely in his compositions, that they cannot well be separated.
When he was six-and-twenty years old, he married Katharine Boutcher, a young woman of humble connections--the dark-eyed Kate of several of his lyric poems. She lived near his father's house and was noticed by Blake for the whiteness of her hand, the brightness of her eyes, and a slim and handsome shape, corresponding with his own notions of sylphs and naiads. As he was an original in all things, it would have been out of character to fall in love like an ordinary mortal; he was describing one evening in company the pains he had suffered from some capricious lady or another, when Katharine Boutcher said, 'I pity you from my heart.' 'Do you pity me?' said Blake, 'then I love you for that.' 'And I love you,' said the frank-hearted lass, and so the courtship began. He tried how well she looked in a drawing, then how her charms became verse; and finding moreover that she had good domestic qualities, he married her. They lived together long and happily.
She seemed to have been created on purpose for Blake:--she believed him to be the finest genius on earth; she believed in his verse--she believed in his designs; and to the wildest flights of his imagination she bowed the knee, and was a worshipper. She set his house in good order, prepared his frugal meal, learned to think as he thought, and, indulging him in his harmless absurdities, became, as it were, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. She learned--what a young and handsome woman is seldom apt to learn--to despise gaudy dresses, costly meals, pleasant company, and agreeable invitations--she found out the way of being happy at home, living on the simplest of food, and contented in the homeliest of clothing. It was no ordinary mind which could do all this; and she whom Blake emphatically called his beloved,' was no ordinary woman. She wrought off in the press the impressions of his plates--she colored them with a light and neat hand--made drawings much in the spirit of her husband's compositions, and almost rivaled him in all things save in the power which he possessed of seeing visions of any individual living or dead, whenever he chose to see them.
His marriage, I have heard, was not agreeable to his father; and he then left his roof and resided with his wife in Green Street, Leicester Fields. He returned to Broad Street, on the death of his father, a devout man, and an honest shopkeeper, of fifty years' standing, took a first-floor and a shop, and in company with one Parker, who had been his fellow-apprentice, commenced print-seller. His wife attended to the business, and Blake continued to engrave, and took Robert, his favorite brother, for a pupil. This speculation did not succeed--his brother too sickened and died; he had a dispute with Parker--the shop was extinguished, and he removed to 28 Poland Street. Here he commenced that series of works which give him a right to be numbered among the men of genius of his country. In sketching designs, engraving plates, writing songs, and composing music, he employed his time, with his wife sitting at his side, encouraging him in all his undertakings. As he drew the figure he meditated the song which was to accompany it, and the music to which the verse was to be sung, was the offspring too of the same moment. Of his music there are no specimens--he wanted the art of noting it down--if it equalled many of his drawings, and some of his songs, we have lost melodies of real value.
The first fruits were the 'Songs of Innocence and Experience,' a work original and natural, and of high merit, both in poetry and in painting. It consists of some sixty-five or seventy scenes, presenting images of youth and manhood--of domestic sadness, and fireside joy--of the gaiety and innocence, and happiness of childhood. Every scene has its poetical accompaniment, curiously interwoven with the group or the landscape, and forming, from the beauty of the color and the prettiness of the pencilling, a very fair picture of itself. Those designs are in general highly poetical; more allied, however, to heaven than to earth,--a kind of spiritual abstractions, and indicating a better world and fuller happiness than mortals enjoy. The picture of Innocence is introduced with the following sweet verses.
'Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me--
Pipe a song about a lamb; So I piped with merry cheer. Piper, pipe that song again-- So I piped--he wept to hear.
Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe, Sing thy songs of happy cheer-- So I sung the same again, While he wept with joy to hear.
Piper, sit thee down and write In a book that all may read-- So he vanished from my sight: And I plucked a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs, Every child may joy to hear.'
In a higher and better spirit he wrought with his pencil. But then he imagined himself under spiritual influences; he saw the forms and listened to the voices of the worthies of other days; the past and the future were before him, and he heard, in imagination, even that awful voice which called on Adam amongst the trees of the garden. In this kind of dreaming abstraction, he lived much of his life; all his works are stamped with it; and though they owe much of their mysticism and obscurity to the circumstance, there can be no doubt that they also owe to it much of their singular loveliness and beauty. It was wonderful that he could thus, month after month, and year after year, lay down his graver after it had won him his daily wages, and retire from the battle for bread, to disport his fancy amid scenes of more than earthly splendor, and creatures pure as unfalled dew.
In this lay the weakness and the strength of Blake, and those who desire to feel the character of his compositions, must be familiar with his history and the peculiarities of his mind. He was by nature a poet, a dreamer, and an enthusiast. The eminence which it had been the first ambition of his youth to climb, was visible before him, and he saw on its ascent or on its summit those who had started earlier in the race of fame. He felt conscious of his own merit, but w as not aware of the thousand obstacles which were ready to interpose.' He thought that he had but to sing songs and draw designs, and become great and famous. The crosses which genius is heir to had been wholly unforeseen--and they befell him early; he wanted the skill of hand, and fine tact of fancy and taste, to impress upon the offspring of his thoughts that popular shape, which gives such productions immediate circulation. His works were looked coldly on by the world, and were only esteemed by men of poetic minds, or those who were fond of things out of the common way. He earned a little fame, but no money by these speculations, and had to depend for bread on the labours of the graver.
All this neither crushed his spirit, nor induced him to work more in the way of the world; but it had a visible influence upon his mind. He became more seriously thoughtful, avoided the company of men, and lived in the manner of a hermit, in that vast wilderness, London. Necessity made him frugal, and honesty and independence prescribed plain clothes, homely fare, and a cheap habitation. He was thus compelled more than ever to retire to worlds of his own creating, and seek solace in visions of paradise for the joys which the earth denied him. By frequent indulgence in these imaginings, he gradually began to believe in the reality of what dreaming fancy painted--the pictured forms which swarmed before his eyes, assumed, in his apprehension, the stability of positive revelations, and he mistook the vivid figures, which his professional imagination shaped, for the poets, and heroes, and princes of old. Amongst his friends, he at length ventured to intimate that the designs on which he was engaged were not from his own mind, but copied from grand works revealed to him in visions; and those who believed that, would readily lend an ear to the assurance that he was commanded to execute his performances by a celestial tongue!
Of these imaginary visitations he made good use, when he invented his truly original and beautiful mode of engraving and tinting his plates. He had made the sixty-five designs of his Days of Innocence, and was meditating, he said, on the best means of multiplying their resemblance in form and in hue; he felt sorely perplexed. At last he was made aware that the spirit of his favorite brother Robert was in the room, and to this celestial visitor he applied for counsel. The spirit advised him at once: 'write,' he said, 'the poetry, and draw the designs upon the copper with a certain liquid (which he named, and which Blake ever kept a secret); then cut the plain parts of the plate down with aqua-fortis, and this will give the whole, both poetry and figures, in the manner of a stereotype.' The plan recommended by this gracious spirit was adopted; the plates were engraved, and the work printed off. The artist then added a peculiar beauty of his own. He tinted both the figures and the verse with a variety of colors, amongst which, while yellow prevails, the whole has a rich and lustrous beauty, to which I know little that can be compared. The size of these prints is four inches and a half high by three inches wide. The original genius of Blake was always confined, through poverty, to small dimensions. Sixty-five plates of copper were an object to him who had little money. The Gates of Paradise, a work of sixteen designs, and those exceedingly small, was his next undertaking. The meaning of the artist is not a little obscure; it seems to have been his object to represent the innocence, the happiness, and the upward aspirations of man. They bespeak one intimately acquainted with the looks and the feelings of children. Over them there is shed a kind of mysterious halo which raises feelings of devotion. The Songs of Innocence, and the Gates of Paradise, became popular among the collectors of prints. To the sketch book and the cabinet the works of Blake are unfortunately confined.
If there be mystery in the meaning of the Gates of Paradise, his succeeding performance, by name Urizen, has the merit or the fault of surpassing all human comprehension. The spirit which dictated this strange work was undoubtedly a dark one; nor does the strange kind of prose which is intermingled with the figures serve to enlighten us. There are in all twenty-seven designs representing beings human, demoniac, and divine, in situations of pain and sorrow and suffering. One character--evidently an evil spirit--appears in most of the plates; the horrors of hell, and the terrors of darkness and divine wrath, seem his sole portion. He swims in gulps of fire--descends in cataracts of flame--holds combats with scaly serpents, or writhes in anguish without any visible cause. One of his exploits is to chase a female soul through 'a narrow gate and hurl her headlong down into a darksome pit. The wild verses which are scattered here and there, talk of the sons and the daughters of Urizen. He seems to have extracted these twenty-seven scenes out of many visions--what he meant by them even his wife declared she could not tell, though she was sure they had a meaning and a fine one. Something like the fall of Lucifer and the creation of Man is dimly visible in this extravagant work; it is not a little fearful to look upon; a powerful, dark, terrible though undefined and indescribable impression is left on the mind--and it is in no haste to be gone. The size of the designs is four inches by six; they bear date, 'Lambeth, 1794.' He had left Poland Street and was residing in Hercules Buildings.
The name of Blake began now to be known a little, and Edwards, the bookseller, employed him to illustrate Young's Night Thoughts. The reward in money was small, but the temptation in fame was great: the work was performed something in the manner of old books with illuminated margins. Along the ample margins which the poetry left on the page the artist sketched his fanciful creations; contracting or expanding them according to the space. Some of those designs were in keeping with the poems, but there were others which alarmed fastidious people: the serious and the pious were not prepared to admire shapes trembling in nudity round the verses of a grave divine. In the exuberance of Young there are many fine figures; but they are figures of speech only, on which art should waste none of its skill. This work was so much, in many parts, to the satisfaction of Flaxman, that he introduced Blake to Hayley the poet, who, in 1800, persuaded him to remove to Felpham in Sussex, to make engravings for the Life of Cowper. To that place he accordingly went with his wife and sister, and was welcomed by Hayley with much affection. Of his journey and his feelings he gives the following account to Flaxman, whom he usually addressed thus, 'Dear Sculptor of Eternity.'
'We are arrived safe at our cottage, which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It is a perfect model for cottages, and I think for palaces of magnificence, only enlarging and not altering its proportions, and adding ornaments and not principals. Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden, gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapors; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen, and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are both well, and are courting Neptune for an embrace.'
Thus far had he written in the language and feelings of a person of upper air; though some of the expressions are tinctured with the peculiar enthusiasm of the man, they might find shelter under the licence of figurative speech, and pass muster as the poetic language of new-found happiness. Blake thus continues:--
'And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life, and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality? You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel, my friend and companion from eternity. Farewell, my dear friend, remember me and my wife in love and friendship to Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of russet gold.'
This letter, written in the year 1800, gives the true twofold image of the author's mind. During the day he was a man of sagacity and sense, who handled his graver wisely, and conversed in a wholesome and pleasant manner; in the evening, when he had done his prescribed task, he gave a loose to his imagination. While employed on those engravings which accompany the works of Cowper, he saw such company as the country where he resided afforded, and talked with Hayley about poetry with a feeling to which the author of the Triumphs of Temper was an utter stranger; but at the close of day away went Blake to the seashore to indulge in his own thoughts and:
'High converse with the dead to hold.'
Here he forgot the present moment and lived in the past; he conceived, verily, that he had lived in other days, and had formed friendships with Homer and Moses; with Pindar and Virgil; with Dante and Milton. These great men, he asserted, appeared to him in visions, and even entered into conversation. Milton, in a moment of confidence, entrusted him with a whole poem of his, which the world had never seen; but unfortunately the communication was oral, and the poetry seemed to have lost much of its brightness in Blake's recitation. When asked about the looks of those visions, he answered, 'They are all majestic shadows, gray but luminous, and superior to the common height of men.' It was evident that the solitude of the country gave him a larger swing in imaginary matters. His wife often accompanied him to these strange interviews; she saw nothing and heard as little, but she was certain that her husband both heard and saw.
Blake's mind at all times resembled that first page in the magician's book of gramoury, which made:
'The cobweb on the dungeon wall, Seem tapestry in lordly hall.'
His mind could convert the most ordinary occurrence into something mystical and supernatural. He often saw less majestic shapes than those of the poets of old. 'Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, madam?' he once said to a lady, who happened to sit by him in company. 'Never, sir!' was the answer. 'I have,' said Blake, 'but not before last night. I was walking alone in my garden, there was great stillness among the branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air; I heard a low and pleasant sound, and I knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures of the size and color of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. It was a fairy funeral.' It would, perhaps, have been better for his fame had he connected it more with the superstitious beliefs of his country--amongst the elves and fairies his fancy might have wandered at will--their popular character would perhaps have kept him within the bounds of traditionary belief, and the sea of his imagination might have had a shore.
After a residence of three years in his cottage at Felpham, he removed to 17 South Molton Street, London, where he lived seventeen years. He came back to town with a fancy not a little exalted by the solitude of the country, and in this mood designed and engraved an extensive and strange work which he entitled '_Jerusalem._' A production so exclusively wild was not allowed to make its appearance in an ordinary way: he thus announced it. 'After my three years' slumber on the banks of the ocean, I again display my giant forms to the public.' Of those designs there are no less than an hundred; what their meaning is the artist has left unexplained. It seems of a religious, political, and spiritual kind, and wanders from hell to heaven and from heaven to earth; now glancing into the distractions of our own days, and then making a transition to the antediluvians. The crowning defect is obscurity; meaning seems now and then about to dawn; you turn plate after plate and read motto after motto, in the hope of escaping from darkness into light. But the first might as well be looked at last; the whole seems a riddle which no ingenuity can solve. Yet, if the work be looked at for form and effect rather than for meaning, many figures may be pronounced worthy of Michael Angelo. There is wonderful freedom of attitude and position; men, spirits, gods, and angels, move with an ease which makes one lament that we know not wherefore they are put in motion. Well might Hayley call him his 'gentle visionary Blake.' He considered the Jerusalem to be his greatest work, and for a set of the tinted engravings he charged twenty-five guineas. Few joined the artist in his admiration. The Jerusalem, with all its giant forms, failed to force its way into circulation.
His next work was the Illustrations of Blair's Grave, which came to the world with the following commendation by Fuseli: 'The author of the moral series before us has endeavored to awaken sensibility by touching our sympathies with nearer, less ambiguous and less ludicrous imagery, than what mythology, Gothic superstition, or symbols as far fetched as inadequate could supply. His avocation has been chiefly employed to spread a familiar and domestic atmosphere round the most important of all subjects, to connect the visible and the invisible world without provoking probability, and to lead the eye from the milder light of time to the radiations of eternity.' For these twelve Inventions,' as he called them, Blake received twenty guineas from Cromeck, the engraver--a man of skill in art and taste in literature. The price was little, but nevertheless it was more than what he usually received for such productions; he also undertook to engrave them. But Blake's mode of engraving was as peculiar as his style of designing; it had little of that grace of execution about it, which attracts customers, and the Inventions, after an experiment or two, were placed under the fashionable graver of Louis Schiavonetti. Blake was deeply incensed--he complained that he was deprived of the profit of engraving his own designs, and, with even less justice, that Schiavonetti was unfit for the task.
Some of these twelve 'Inventions' are natural and poetic, others exhibit laborious attempts at the terrific and the sublime. The old Man at Death's Door is one of the best--in the Last Day there are fine groups and admirable single figures--the Wise Ones of the Earth pleading before the inexorable Throne, and the Descent of the Condemned, are creations of a high order. The Death of the Strong Wicked Man is fearful and extravagant, and the flames in which the soul departs from the body have no warrant in the poem or in belief. The Descent of Christ into the Grave is formal and tame, and the hoary old Soul in the Death of the Good Man, travelling heavenward between two orderly Angels, required little outlay of fancy. The frontispiece--a naked Angel descending headlong and rousing the Dead with the Sound of the last Trumpet--alarmed the devout people of the north, and made maids and matrons retire behind their fans.
If the tranquillity of Blake's life was a little disturbed by the dispute about the twelve Inventions,' it was completely shaken by the controversy which now arose between him and Cromeck respecting his Canterbury Pilgrimage. That two artists at one and the same time should choose the same subject for the pencil, seems scarcely credible--especially when such subject was not of a temporary interest. The coincidence here was so close, that Blake accused Stothard of obtaining knowledge of his design through Cromeck, while Stothard with equal warmth asserted that Blake had commenced his picture in rivalry of himself. Blake declared that Cromeck had actually commissioned him to paint the Pilgrimage before Stothard thought of his; to which Cromeck replied, that the order had been given in a vision, for he never gave it. Stothard, a man as little likely to be led aside from truth by love of gain as by visions, added to Cromeck's denial the startling testimony that Blake visited him during the early progress of his picture, and expressed his approbation of it, in such terms, that he proposed to introduce Blake's portrait in the procession, as a mark of esteem. It is probable that Blake obeyed some imaginary revelation in this matter, and mistook it for the order of an earthly employer; but whether commissioned by a vision or by mortal lips, his Canterbury Pilgrimage made its appearance in an exhibition of his principal works in the house of his brother, in Broad Street, during the summer of 1809.
Of original designs, this singular exhibition contained sixteen--they were announced as chiefly 'of a spiritual and political nature'--but then the spiritual works and political feelings of Blake were unlike those of any other man. One piece represented 'The Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan.' Another, 'The Spiritual Form of Seth guiding Behemoth.' This, probably, confounded both divines and politicians; there is no doubt that plain men went wondering away. The chief attraction was the Canterbury Pilgrimage, not indeed from its excellence, but from the circumstance of its origin, which was well known about town, and pointedly alluded to in the catalogue. The picture is a failure. Blake was too great a visionary for dealing with such literal wantons as the Wife of Bath and her jolly companions. The natural flesh and blood of Chaucer prevailed against him. He gives grossness of body for grossness of mind,--tries to be merry and wicked--and in vain.
Those who missed instruction in his pictures, found entertainment in his catalogue, a wild performance, overflowing with the oddities and dreams of the author--which may be considered as a kind of public declaration of his faith concerning art and artists. His first anxiety is about his colors. 'Colouring,' says this new lecturer on the _Chiaroscuro_, 'does not depend on where the colours are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on form or outline. Where that is wrong the coloring never can be right, and it is always wrong in Titian and Corregio, Rubens and Rembrandt; till we get rid of them we shall never equal Raphael and Albert Dürer, Michael Angelo and Julio Romano. Clearness and precision have been my chief objects in painting these pictures--clear colors and firm determinate lineaments, unbroken by shadows--which ought to display and not hide form, as in the practice of the later schools of Italy and Flanders. The picture of the Spiritual Form of Pitt is a proof of the power of colors unsullied with oil or with any cloggy vehicle. Oil has been falsely supposed to give strength to colors, but a little consideration must show the fallacy of this opinion. Oil will not drink or absorb color enough to stand the test of any little time and of the air. Let the works of artists since Rubens' time witness to the villainy of those who first brought oil-painting into general opinion and practice, since which we have never had a picture painted that would show itself by the side of an earlier composition. This is an awful thing to say to oil-painters; they may call it madness, but it is true. All the genuine old little pictures are in fresco and not in oil.'
Having settled the true principles and proper materials of color, he proceeds to open up the mystery of his own productions. Those who failed to comprehend the pictures on looking at them, had only to turn to the following account of the Pitt and the Nelson. 'These two pictures,' he says, 'are compositions of a mythological cast, similar to those Apotheoses of Persian, Hindoo, and Egyptian antiquity, which are still preserved in rude monuments, being copies from some stupendous originals now lost or perhaps buried to some happier age. The artist having been taken, in vision, to the ancient republics, monarchies, and patriarchates of Asia, has seen those wonderful originals, called in the sacred Scriptures the cherubim, which were painted and sculptured on the walls of temples, towns, cities, palaces, and erected in the highly-cultivated states of Egypt, Moab, and Edom, among the rivers of Paradise, being originals from which the Greeks and Hetrurians copied Hercules, Venus, Apollo, and all the groundworks of ancient art. They were executed in a very superior style to those justly admired copies, being with their accompaniments terrific and grand in the highest degree. The artist has endeavored to emulate the grandeur of those seen in his vision, and to apply it to modern times on a smaller scale. The Greek Muses are daughters of Memory, and not of Inspiration or Imagination, and therefore not authors of such sublime conceptions; some of these wonderful originals were one hundred feet in height; some were painted as pictures, some were carved as bass-relieves, and some as groups of statues, all containing mythological and recondite meaning. The artist wishes it was now the fashion to make such monuments, and then he should not doubt of having a national commission to execute those pictures of Nelson and Pitt on a scale suitable to the grandeur of the nation who is the parent of his heroes, in highly finished fresco, where the colors would be as permanent as precious stones.'
The man who could not only write down, but deliberately correct the printer's sheets which recorded, matter so utterly wild and mad, was at the same time perfectly sensible to the exquisite nature of Chaucer's delineations, and felt rightly what sort of skill his inimitable Pilgrims required at the hand of an artist. He who saw visions in Coele-Syria and statues an hundred feet high, wrote thus concerning Chaucer: 'The characters of his pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations: as one age falls another rises, different to mortal sight, but to immortals only the same: for we see the same characters repeated again and again, in animals, in vegetables, and in men; nothing new occurs in identical existence. Accident ever varies; substance can never suffer change nor decay. Of Chaucer's characters, some of the names or titles are altered by time, but the characters themselves for ever remain unaltered, and consequently they are the physiognomies of universal human life, beyond which nature never steps. Names alter--things never alter; I have known multitudes of those who would have been monks in the age of monkery, who in this deistical age are deists. As Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men.'
His own notions and much of his peculiar practice in art are scattered at random over the pages of this curious production. His love of a distinct outline made him use close and clinging dresses; they are frequently very graceful--at other times they are constrained, and deform the figures which they so scantily cover. 'The great and golden rule of art (says he) is this:--that the more distinct and sharp and wiry the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp this external line, the greater is the evidence of weak imitative plagiarism and bungling: Protogenes and Apelles knew each other by this line. How do we distinguish the oak from the beech; the horse from the ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we distinguish one face or countenance from another, but by the bounding line and its infinite inflexions and movements? Leave out this line and you leave out life itself: all is chaos again, and the line of the Almighty must be drawn out upon it before man or beast can exist.'
These abominations--concealed outline and tricks of colour--now bring on one of those visionary fits to which Blake was so liable, and he narrates with the most amusing wildness sundry revelations made to him concerning them. He informs us that certain painters were _demons_--let loose on earth to confound the 'sharp wiry outline,' and fill men's minds with fears and perturbations. He signifies that he himself was for some time a miserable instrument in the hands of Chiaro-Scuro demons, who employed him in making 'experiment pictures in oil.' 'These pictures,' says he, 'were the result of temptations and perturbations laboring to destroy imaginative power by means of that infernal machine called Chiaro-Scuro, in the hands of Venetian and Flemish demons, who hate the Roman and Venetian schools. They cause that everything in art shall become a machine; they cause that the execution shall be all blocked up with brown shadows; they put the artist in fear and doubt of his own original conception. The spirit of Titian was particularly active in raising doubts concerning the possibility of executing without a model. Rubens is a most outrageous demon, and by infusing the remembrances of his pictures, and style of execution, hinders all power of individual thought. Corregio is a soft and effeminate, consequently a most cruel demon, whose whole delight is to cause endless labour to whoever suffers him to enter his mind.' When all this is translated into the language of sublunary life, it only means that Blake was haunted with the excellences of other men's works, and, finding himself unequal to the task of rivaling the soft and glowing colors and singular effects of light and shade of certain great masters, betook himself to the study of others not less eminent, who happened to have laid out their strength in outline.
To describe the conversations which Blake held in prose with demons and in verse with angels, would fill volumes, and an ordinary gallery could not contain all the heads which he drew of his visionary visitants. That all this was real, he himself most sincerely believed; nay, so infectious was his enthusiasm, that some acute and sensible persons who heard him expatiate, shook their heads, and hinted that he was an extraordinary man, and that there might be something in the matter. One of his brethren, an artist of some note, employed him frequently in drawing the portraits of those who appeared to him in visions. The most propitious time for those 'angel-visits' was from nine at night till five in the morning; and so docile were his spiritual sitters, that they appeared at the wish of his friends. Sometimes, however, the shape which he desired-to draw was long in appearing, and he sat with his pencil and paper ready and his eyes idly roaming in vacancy; all at once the vision came upon him, and he began to work like one possess.
He was requested to draw the likeness of Sir. William Wallace--the eye of Blake sparkled, for he admired heroes. 'William Wallace!' he exclaimed, 'I see him now--there, there, how noble he looks--reach me my things!' Having drawn for some time, with the same care of hand and steadiness of eye, as if a living sitter had been before him, Blake stopped suddenly, and said, 'I cannot finish him--Edward the First has stept in between him and me.' 'That's lucky,' said his friend, 'for I want the portrait of Edward too.' Blake took another sheet of paper, and sketched the features of Plantagenet; upon which his majesty politely vanished, and the artist finished the head of Wallace. 'And pray, sir,' said a gentleman, who heard Blake's friend tell his story--'was Sir William Wallace an heroic-looking man? And what sort of personage was Edward?' The answer was: 'There they are, sir, both framed and hanging on the wall behind you, judge for yourself.' 'I looked (says my informant) and saw two warlike heads of the size of common life. That of Wallace was noble and heroic, that of Edward stern and bloody. The first had the front of a god, the latter the aspect of a demon.'
The friend who obliged me with these anecdotes, on observing the interest which I took in the subject, said, 'I know much about Blake--I was his companion for nine years. I have sat beside him from ten at night till 'three in the morning, sometimes slumbering and sometimes waking, but Blake never slept; he sat with a pencil and paper drawing portraits of those whom I most desired to see. I will show you, sir, some of these works.' He took out a large book filled with drawings, opened it, and continued, 'Observe the poetic fervor of that face--it is Pindar as he stood a conqueror in the Olympic games. And this lovely creature is Corinna, who conquered in poetry in the same place. That lady is Lais, the courtesan--with the impudence which is part of her profession, she stept in between Blake and Corinna, and he was obliged to paint her to get her away. There! that is a face of a different stamp--can you conjecture who he is?' 'Some scoundrel, I should think, sir.' 'There now--that is a strong proof of the accuracy of Blake--he is a scoundrel indeed! The very individual task-master whom Moses slew in Egypt. And who is this now--only imagine who this is?' 'Other than a good one, I doubt, sir.' 'You are right, it is the Devil--he resembles, and this is remarkable, two men who shall be nameless; one is a great lawyer, and the other--I wish I durst name him--is a suborner of false witnesses. This other head now?--this speaks for itself--it is the head of Herod; how like an eminent officer in the army!'
He closed the book, and taking out a small panel from a private drawer, said, 'This is the last which I shall show you; but it is the greatest curiosity of all. Only look at the splendor of the coloring and the original character of the thing!' 'I see,' said I, 'a naked figure with a strong body and a short neck--with burning eyes which long for moisture, and a face worthy of a murderer, holding a bloody cup in its clawed hands, out of which it seems eager to drink. I never saw any shape so strange, nor did I ever see any coloring so curiously splendid--a kind of glistening green and dusky gold, beautifully varnished. But what in the world is it?' 'It is a ghost, sir--the ghost of a flea--a spiritualisation of the thing!' 'He saw this in a vision then,' I said. 'I'll tell you all about it, sir. I called on him one evening, and found Blake more than usually excited. He told me he had seen a wonderful thing--the ghost of a flea! And did you make a drawing of him? I inquired. No, indeed, said he, I wish I had, but I shall, if he appears again! He looked earnestly into a corner of the room, and then said, here he is--reach me my things--I shall keep my eye on him. There he comes! his eager tongue whisking out of his mouth, a cup in his hand to hold blood and covered with a scaly skin of gold and green;--as he described him so he drew him.'
These stories are scarcely credible, yet there can be no doubt of their accuracy. Another friend, on whose veracity I have the fullest dependence, called one evening on Blake, and found him sitting with a pencil and a panel, drawing a portrait with all the seeming anxiety of a man who is conscious that he has got a fastidious sitter; he looked and drew, and drew and looked, yet no living soul was visible. 'Disturb me not,' said he, in a whisper, 'I have one sitting to me.' 'Sitting to you!' exclaimed his astonished visitor, 'where is he, and what is he?--I see no one.' 'But I see him, sir,' answered Blake haughtily, 'there he is, his name is Lot--you may read of him in the Scripture. _He_ is sitting for his portrait.'
Had he always thought so idly, and wrought on such visionary matters, this memoir would have been the story of a madman, instead of the life of a man of genius, some of whose works are worthy of any age or nation. Even while he was indulging in these laughable fancies, and seeing visions at the request of his friends, he conceived, and drew, and engraved, one of the noblest of all his productions--the Inventions for the Book of Job. He accomplished this series in a small room, which served him for kitchen, bedchamber, and study, where he had no other companion but his faithful Katherine, and no larger income than some seventeen or eighteen shillings a week. Of these Inventions, as the artist loved to call them, there are twenty-one, representing the Man of Uz sustaining his dignity amidst the inflictions of Satan, the reproaches of his friends, and the insults of his wife. It was in such things that Blake shone; the Scripture overawed his imagination, and he was too devout to attempt aught beyond a literal embodying of the majestic scene. He goes step by step with the narrative; always simple, and often sublime--never wandering from the subject, nor overlaying the text with the weight of his own exuberant fancy.
The passages, embodied, will show with what lofty themes he presumed to grapple. 1. Thus did Job continually. 2. The Almighty watches the good man's household. 3. Satan receiving power over Job. 4. The wind from the wilderness destroying Job's children. 5. And I alone am escaped to tell thee. 6. Satan smiting Job with sore boils. 7. Job's friends comforting him. 8. Let the day perish wherein I was born. 9. Then a spirit passed before my face. 10. Job laughed to scorn by his friends. 11. With dreams upon my bed thou scarest me--thou affrightest me with visions. 12. I am young and ye are old, wherefore I was afraid. 13. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. 14. When the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy. 15. Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee. 16. Thou hast fulfilled the judgment of the wicked. 17. I have heard thee with the hearing of my ear, but now my eye rejoiceth in thee. 18. Also the Lord accepted Job. 19. Every one also gave him a piece of money. 20. There were not found women fairer than the daughters of Job. 21. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning.
While employed on these remarkable productions, he was made sensible that the little approbation which the world had ever bestowed on him was fast leaving him. The waywardness of his fancy, and the peculiar execution of his compositions, were alike unadapted for popularity; the demand for his works lessened yearly from the time that he exhibited his Canterbury Pilgrimage; and he could hardly procure sufficient to sustain life, when old age was creeping upon him. Yet, poverty-stricken as he was, his cheerfulness never forsook him--he uttered no complaint--he contracted no debt, and continued to the last manly and independent. It is the fashion to praise genius when it is gone to the grave--the fashion is cheap and convenient. Of the existence of Blake few men of taste could be ignorant--of his great merits multitudes knew, nor was his extreme poverty any secret. Yet he was reduced--one of the ornaments of the age--to a miserable garret and a crust of bread, and would have perished from want, had not some friends, neither wealthy nor powerful, averted this disgrace from coming upon our country. One of these gentlemen, Mr. Linnell, employed Blake to engrave his Inventions of the Book of Job; by this he earned money enough to keep him living--for the good old man still labored with all the ardor of the days of his youth, and with skill equal to his enthusiasm. These engravings are very rare, very beautiful, and very peculiar. They are in the earlier fashion of workmanship, and bear no resemblance whatever to the polished and graceful style which now prevails. I have never seen a tinted copy, nor am I sure that tinting would accord with the extreme simplicity of the designs, and the mode in which they are handled. The Songs of Innocence, and these Inventions for Job, are the happiest of Blake's works, and ought to be in the portfolios of all who are lovers of nature and imagination.
Two extensive works, bearing the ominous names of Prophecies, one concerning America, the other Europe, next made their appearance from his pencil and graver. The first contains eighteen and the other seventeen plates, and both are plentifully seasoned with verse, without the incumbrance of rhyme. It is impossible to give a satisfactory description of these works; the frontispiece of the latter, representing the Ancient of Days, in an orb of light, stooping into chaos, to measure out the world, has been admired less for its meaning than for the grandeur of its outline. A head and a tailpiece in the other have been much noticed--one exhibits the bottom of the sea, with enormous fishes preying on a dead body--the other, the surface, with a dead body floating, on which an eagle with outstretched wings is feeding. The two angels pouring out the spotted plague upon Britain--an angel standing in the sun, attended by three furies--and several other Inventions in these wild works, exhibit wonderful strength of drawing and splendor of coloring. Of loose prints--but which were meant doubtless to form part of some extensive work--one of the most remarkable is the Great Sea Serpent; and a figure, sinking in a stormy sea at sunset--the glow of which, with the foam upon the dark waves, produces a magical effect.
After a residence of seventeen years in South Molton Street, Blake removed (not in consequence, alas! of any increase of fortune) to No. 3 Fountain Court, Strand. This was in the year 1823. Here he engraved by day and saw visions by night, and occasionally employed himself in making Inventions for Dante; and such was his application that he designed in all one hundred and two, and engraved seven. It was publicly known that he was in a declining state of health; that old age had come upon him, and that he was in want. Several friends, and artists among the number, aided him a little, in a delicate way, by purchasing his works, of which he had many copies. He sold many of his Songs of Innocence, and also of Urizen, and he wrought incessantly upon what he counted his masterpiece, the Jerusalem, tinting and adorning it, with the hope that his favorite would find a purchaser. No one, however, was found ready to lay out twenty-five guineas on a work which no one could have any hope of comprehending, and this disappointment sank to the old man's heart.
He had now reached his seventy-first year, and the strength of nature was fast yielding. Yet he was to the last cheerful and contented. 'I glory,' he said, 'in dying, and have no grief but in leaving you, Katherine; we have lived happy, and we have lived long; we have been ever together, but we shall be divided soon. Why should I fear death? nor do I fear it. I have endeavored to live as Christ commands, and have sought to worship. God truly--in my own house, when I was not seen of men.' He grew weaker and weaker--he could no longer sit upright; and was laid in his bed, with no one to watch over him, save his wife, who, feeble and old herself, required help in such a touching duty.
The Ancient of Days was such a favorite with Blake, that three days before his death, he sat bolstered up in bed, and tinted it with his choicest colors and in his happiest style. He touched and retouched it--held it at arm's-length, and then threw it from him, exclaiming, 'There! that will do! I cannot mend it.' He saw his wife in tears--she felt this was to be the last of his works--'Stay, Kate! (cried Blake) keep just as you are--I will draw your portrait--for you have ever been an angel to me'--she obeyed, and the dying artist' made a fine likeness.
The very joyfulness with which this singular man welcomed the coming of death, made his dying moments intensely mournful. He lay chanting songs, and the verses and the music were both the offspring of the moment. He lamented that he could no longer commit those inspirations, as he called them, to paper. 'Kate,' he said, 'I am a changing man--I always rose and wrote down my thoughts, whether it rained, snowed, or shone, and you arose too and sat beside me--this can' be no longer.' He died on the 12th of August, 1828, without any visible pain--his wife, who sat watching him, did not perceive when he ceased breathing.
William Blake was of low stature and slender make, with a high pallid forehead, and eyes large, dark, and expressive. His temper was touchy, and when moved, he spoke with an indignant eloquence, which commanded respect. His voice, in general, was low and musical, his manners gentle and unassuming, his conversation a singular mixture of knowledge and enthusiasm. His whole life was one of labour and privation,--he had never tasted the luxury of that independence, which comes from professional profit. This untoward fortune he endured with unshaken equanimity--offering himself, in imagination, as a martyr in the great cause of poetic art;--_pitying_ some of his more fortunate brethren for their inordinate love of gain; and not doubting that whatever he might have won in gold by adopting other methods, would have been a poor compensation for the ultimate loss of fame. Under this agreeable delusion, he lived all his life--he was satisfied when his graver gained him a guinea a week--the greater the present denial, the surer the glory hereafter.
Though he was the companion of Flaxman and Fuseli, and sometimes their pupil, he never attained that professional skill, without which all genius is bestowed in vain. He was his own teacher chiefly; and self-instruction, the parent occasionally of great beauties, seldom fails to produce great deformities. He was a most splendid tinter, but no colorist, and his works were all of small dimensions, and therefore confined to the cabinet and the portfolio. His happiest flights, as well as his wildest, are thus likely to remain shut up from the world. If we look at the man through his best and most intelligible works, we shall find that he who could produce the Songs of Innocence and Experience, the Gates of Paradise, and the Inventions for Job, was the possessor of very lofty faculties, with no common skill in art, and moreover that, both in thought and mode of treatment, he was a decided original. But should we, shutting our eyes to the merits of those works, determine to weigh his worth by his Urizen, his Prophecies of Europe and America, and his Jerusalem, our conclusion would be very unfavorable; we would say that, with much freedom of composition and boldness of posture, he was unmeaning, mystical, and extravagant, and that his original mode of working out his conceptions was little better than a brilliant way of animating absurdity. An overflow of imagination is a failing uncommon in this age, and has generally received of late little quarter from the critical portion of mankind. Yet imagination is the life and spirit of all great works of genius and taste; and, indeed, without it, the head thinks and the hand labours in vain. Ten thousand authors and artists rise to the proper, the graceful, and the beautiful, for ten who ascend into 'the heaven of invention.' A work--whether from poet or painter--conceived in the fiery ecstasy of imagination, lives through every limb; while one elaborated out by skill and taste only will look, in comparison, like a withered and sapless tree beside one green and flourishing. Blake's misfortune was that of possessing this precious gift in excess. His fancy overmastered him--until he at length confounded 'the mind's eye' with the corporeal organ, and dreamed himself out of the sympathies of actual life.
His method of coloring was a secret which he kept to himself, or confided only to his wife; he believed that it was revealed in a vision, and that he was bound in honor to conceal it from the world. 'His modes of preparing his grounds,' says Smith, in his Supplement to the Life of Nollekens, 'and laying them over his panels for painting, mixing his colors, and manner of working, were those which he considered to have been practized by the early fresco painters, whose productions still remain in many instances vividly and permanently fresh. His ground was a mixture of whiting and carpenters' glue, which he passed over several times in the coatings; his colors he ground himself, and also united with them the same sort of glue, but in a much weaker state. He would, in the course of painting a picture, pass a very thin transparent wash of glue-water over the whole of the parts he had worked upon, and then proceed with his finishing. He had many secret modes of working, both as a colorist and an engraver. His method of eating away the plain copper, and leaving the lines of his subjects and his words as stereotype, is, in my mind, perfectly original. Mrs. Blake is in possession of the secret, and she ought to receive something considerable for its communication, as I am quite certain it may be used to advantage, both to artists and literary characters in general. The affection and fortitude of this woman entitled her to much respect. She shared her husband's lot without a murmur, set her heart solely upon his fame, and soothed him in those hours of misgiving and despondency which are not unknown to the strongest intellects. She still lives to lament the loss of Blake--and _fell_ it.'