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diff --git a/34596.txt b/34596.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..39db44c --- /dev/null +++ b/34596.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6837 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Blake, by Charles Gardner + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: William Blake + The Man + +Author: Charles Gardner + +Release Date: December 8, 2010 [EBook #34596] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM BLAKE *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian +Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + +WILLIAM BLAKE: THE MAN + + + + +_All Rights Reserved_ + + + + +[Illustration: THE BURIAL OF MOSES. + +_Reproduced by kind permission of Mr Sydney Morse._] + + + + + WILLIAM BLAKE + THE MAN + + + BY CHARLES GARDNER + + AUTHOR OF "VISION AND VESTURE," + "THE REDEMPTION OF RELIGION," ETC. + + + "The men that were with me saw not the vision" + DANIEL + + + LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED + NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. + MCMXIX + + + + To MONICA + + + + +Preface + + +This book is an attempt to trace the mental and spiritual growth of +William Blake as disclosed in his works. After meditating on these for +some years an image of the man has risen in my mind. This I have tried to +present with the aid of such biographical details as are to be found in +Gilchrist's _Life_. My warm thanks are due to Mr and Mrs Sydney Morse for +permission to reproduce their beautiful _Prayer of the Infant Jesus_, and +_The Burial of Moses_. The photographs were taken by Mr Albert Hester. +Also I must thank Mr J. M. Dent for the two designs from an original and +invaluable _Job_ series in his possession. The rest of the illustrations +are from the Print Room of the British Museum. + +C. G. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + TITLE-PAGE 3 + + DEDICATION 5 + + PREFACE 7 + + CONTENTS 9 + + ILLUSTRATIONS 10 + + CHAPTER + + I. CHILDHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP 11 + + II. COMING OF AGE AND MARRIAGE 21 + + III. THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 26 + + IV. EARLY MARRIED LIFE AND EARLY WORK 37 + + V. WESLEY, WHITEFIELD, LAVATER, AND SWEDENBORG 46 + + VI. THE REBELS 81 + + VII. ACTION AND REACTION 102 + + VIII. WILLIAM HAYLEY 114 + + IX. THE BIG PROPHETIC BOOKS 131 + + X. CROMEK, SIR JOSHUA, STOTHARD, AND CHAUCER 153 + + XI. THE SUPREME VISION 165 + + XII. DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 169 + + XIII. EPILOGUE 189 + + INDEX 195 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + THE BURIAL OF MOSES _Frontispiece_ + + FACING PAGE + + GLAD DAY 24 + + LAVATER 50 + + THE ANCIENT OF DAYS 100 + + URIZEN IN CHAINS 106 + + LOS 108 + + MIRTH AND HER COMPANIONS 124 + + ALBION 144 + + THE PRAYER OF THE INFANT JESUS 166 + + JOB SERIES, DESIGN V 182 + + JOB SERIES, DESIGN XIV 184 + + FROM DANTE SERIES 186 + + + + +WILLIAM BLAKE: THE MAN + + + + +CHAPTER I + +CHILDHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP + + +William Blake was born on November 28th, 1757, at 28 Broad Street, Carnaby +Market, Golden Square. + +To-day a large house stands in Broad Street numbered 28, to which is +attached a blue disk announcing that William Blake, Poet and Artist, was +born there. The house looks old and shabby, and may well have stood a +hundred years; but on inquiry one finds that it is a recent erection, and +that of Blake's actual house not one stone has been left upon another. One +walks through Broad Street and its neighbouring streets hoping to see at +least one group of buildings as Blake saw them. But all has changed, and +except for a block of houses on one side of Golden Square, there is +nothing to remind one of the sharp transitions that a few years can +effect. Even the sounds have changed. From the doors and windows of Number +28 is heard day and night the whir of machinery ceaselessly at work to +supply the inhabitants of Pall Mall and St James's with electric light. +Carnaby Market has vanished, and its glowing colours have reappeared in +Berwick Street, where fruits are displayed on public stalls, and where +from time to time titled ladies are known to explore in search of a pair +of boots, or some other indispensable article of clothing. Great ugly +buildings--a brewery, an infirmary given up during the war to Belgian +refugees, warehouses--afflict the eye at every turn; and through the open +windows of the upper stories the social regenerator may detect the +countless bent backs and expert fingers of tailor hands turning out +perfect equipments for noblemen all over the country who come to Regent +Street, Maddox Street, and Conduit Street to be measured and fitted and +tried. + +In Blake's day the transitions in Broad Street were more clearly defined. +It had been a fashionable quarter, and still retained a vivid memory of +its past glory. The new buildings were shops of a good solid kind, which +struck the eye like vivid green paint as they sprang up side by side with +the older private houses that time had softened and mellowed. + +Blake's father was a hosier. His name was James, he was married to +Catherine, and they had five children, William being the second. James was +a dissenter, but, like so many dissenters, he liked such important +functions as baptism, marriage, and burial to be performed by the Church +of England, that there might be no mistake about them. Accordingly, +William was taken on December 11th, when he was a fortnight old, to be +christened at St James's Church in a Grinling Gibbons font, the highly +ornate character of which was fortunately not observed by the tender +recipient of baptismal grace. + +William was a solitary, imaginative boy. His imagination was first +stimulated and nourished by town. His father's home, in sharp contrast +with the older houses in the neighbourhood, made him perceive that there +was a meaning Past as well as a so-far unmeaning Present: and the moment +his imagination escaped into the past it tended to abstraction, but knew +no bounds. + +Very soon in his solitary walks he found his way into the country, +emerging from London on the south side and exploring as far as Peckham +Rye, Dulwich, Streatham, and Sydenham. His first glimpse of the country +was to him as our first trip abroad to us. The trees, the hills, the grass +and the cattle spoke obliquely to an imagination that already had a bias. +He loved them--with discretion. To him London was older than the country. +Nature has a way of disguising her great age in an ever renewed youthful +present. London's present drives one to the past. Nature bewitches her +children and will not allow them to transcend her. A great city with its +pulsing life carries the exuberant spirit in its mighty rhythm, and yet +drives it back to the ancient primeval sources concealed in the eternal +kingdom of the imagination. Wordsworth, Nature's lover, soothes and lulls +our restlessness and pain, but fails to carry us into the promised land. +Blake, the inspired citizen, pierces with his sword through Nature, and +will not rest until in England's green and pleasant land he has built +Jerusalem, wherein we may feast as comrades and be satisfied with the wine +of eternity. + +Little William Blake was not like other children, or he might have romped +with his three brothers, John, James, and Robert, and his sister, +Catherine. But from the first he was peculiar, sensitive, and liable to +visions. His first recorded vision was in Peckham Rye. There he saw a tree +filled with angels. He was neither startled nor surprised. It seemed +entirely natural, and, childlike, he told his vision to his parents when +he reached home. Visions were not in his father's line of business. In the +dark days of popish supremacy there had been idle monks who thrashed and +starved themselves till they saw visions. Even the reformed Church of +England knew better than that, and a dissenter of the eighteenth century +who spent his spare hours from the shop in reading knew precisely what +were the things from which he dissented. He must nip William's visions in +the bud, and he would thrash him. Happily, Mrs. Blake stepped between. It +was a jarring shock to an over-sensitive child that a heavy penalty +awaited the mention of visions. He continued to see them, but he kept them +to himself. His brothers and sister were like his father. Robert, who in +after years would have understood, was in the middle of his teething, and +it did not yet appear what he would be. Hence all things worked together +to separate William from his family and to thrust him into the world of +imagination. + +At this time--he was about nine years old--he became a devourer of books. +His mental bias was sufficiently strong to draw to him the books that +would nourish him. Percy's _Reliques_, which was sure to be among his +father's books, was entirely congenial to him, as later to little Walter +Scott. Also Shakespeare and some of the Elizabethans, of whom Ben Jonson +was certainly one, were absorbed into his being. Spencer's _Faery Queen_ +and later poets of his own time--Rowley, Thomson, Chatterton--were his +daily companions: and above all he adored with passionate idolatry the +then famous _Ossian_ of Macpherson. + +Swinburne has expressed astonishment that the child Blake could admire +such "lank and lamentable counterfeits of the poetical style" as +Macpherson supplied to an undiscerning generation. We must remember that +in spite of the Highland Society, then meeting in London, Blake had no +easy access to the times of Fingal and Ossian, such as we have to-day. +There was something in his genius which made him crave for the society of +the Celtic heroes and gods. If Macpherson's poetic stream was muddy, +Blake's thirst was too consuming to allow of criticism. What is +disconcerting is that the mature Blake should retain his admiration of +Macpherson and bracket him with the greatest poets of any age. We can only +say that what we have loved with our whole heart in childhood, and has +entered for better or worse into the very tissue of our being, we cannot +criticize; and simple, trustful Blake to the end of his days would have +reckoned himself guilty of impious disloyalty if he had admitted even to +himself that there were spots in his sun. + +Blake's reading had effected an invaluable service for him--it peopled his +world of imagination. There was terror in his first approach on the +threshold, a terror never forgotten and often reproduced in his designs. +But when he was pushed beyond the threshold and its covering shadow, he +gradually grew accustomed to the changed lights, and he began to discern +its forms and its outlines and its colours. These in their turn reacted on +the outer world until he saw it not as a hard unsurpassable fact, but a +mirror of the inner things which in reality were the substance, the form, +and the foundation. Henceforth he valued the forms and outlines of things +because they were a sign and pledge to him of the inner resplendent City +which was not only built on an eternal foundation but was actually the +home of his spirit. As soon as he apprehended the significance of outline +he developed an ardent desire to draw. + +This impulse was quickly observed by his father and encouraged by him. +William was sent to learn drawing from a Mr Pars, who kept a +drawing-school in the Strand. Here he copied plaster casts and odd-and-end +plaster bits of the human body, the body itself being left severely alone. +A certain amount of technical facility was thus acquired, but his +education in art advanced more surely from his desultory wanderings in +sale-rooms and in the private galleries of munificent noblemen. At the +sale-rooms he bought prints often for a few pence, and his little store of +prints was added to by gifts from his father, who also presented him with +models of the Gladiator, Hercules, Venus of Medici. In this way he gained +his first enthusiastic knowledge of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Martin +Hemskerck, Albert Duerer and Julio Romano, who were exactly the right +teachers for him. Michael Angelo and the Florentine School believed that +drawing was the foundation of all great art. Albert Duerer and his great +German successors were of the same opinion. William Blake, the little +citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, had known the horror of indefiniteness, +and worked through his apprenticeship to joy only when he discovered that +the blessed City stood four-square, and was bounded by great walls on its +four sides. Hence his selection of prints was instinctive. He knew without +being told what helped him to find himself, and he escaped once for all, +while still a child, the seductive elegance of his own age. + +These were happy years. His mind was already stored with unfashionable +knowledge, gleaned chiefly from the robust Elizabethan age, and his +spirit, like a mirror, reflected the things he saw with his spiritual eye. +His happiness was creative, and he burst into song when he was only eleven +in strains that savoured of Ben Jonson, but were wholly fresh and +captivating because they were inspired by the first fresh vision of his +childhood. There is surely nothing in any language written by a boy of +eleven to touch the song: _How sweet I roam'd from field to field_. It is +a sudden spring of sparkling water that can never lose its purity. + +Blake remained four years with Pars, and then his father, willing that his +son should become an artist, apprenticed him in 1771 to Basire in Great +Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. + +We who stand far apart from Blake's day can see that this was the best +thing that could have happened. Had his father been a rich man, able to +pay a heavy premium that his son might be taught by one of the popular +engravers of the day, we should have had the distressing picture of Blake +moulded different and moulded wrong by a Woollett, a Bartolozzi, or an +Angelica Kaufmann, and his whole soul in rebellious and ineffectual +protest. As it was, Basire was master of the technical part of his craft, +he believed in accurate, definite outline, and not being a man of genius, +did not think it necessary that his pupils should turn out servile copies +of himself. Blake learnt to handle his tools, to lay a good foundation, +and technical proficiency. In after years, when engraving was to be a +chief means of expressing his own original vision, he was saved from the +painful necessity of having to unlearn much or all of his master's +teaching. + +After two quiet years with Basire a providential thing happened. Two more +apprentices were taken on by him. These were wholly products of the time, +and Blake found himself in violent collision with them in aims, methods, +and tastes. To keep the peace, Blake was separated from them and sent to +draw in Westminster Abbey. + +Gothic architecture was as intoxicating a revelation to Blake as the +discovery of Michael Angelo and Albert Duerer in the sale-rooms of Christie +and Langford. The Chapel of Edward the Confessor, recently piled up with +sand-bags to protect it from the desecration of German bombs, became to +Blake a little sanctuary. Here his thoughts travelled without fatigue many +hundred years back, and the dim background of the Chapel became a fit +setting for his bright visions of the past. He copied with silent +intensity the monuments of the Confessor, Henry III, Queen Elinor, +Philippa, and the beautiful work of Aymer de Valence. These days were +decisive for his lifetime. Gothic architecture was germane to his own +soul. Its spirit sank inwards and appeared again and again in the +architectural fragments of his own designs. There remained for him one +more great formative heritage from the past, and then, with his roots well +set, he was to reach forward to the future and prophesy in rhythmic words +that are meat and drink to us in the twentieth century. + +Blake remained with Basire for seven years. During these years he had +glimpses of a world different from the one in which his family moved. +Oliver Goldsmith, with his fine head, came as a shining messenger, and +actually walked into Basire's. Oh! that he might grow up to have such a +head! Woollett was a visitor, and a sufficiently frequent one to cease to +be dazzling even to an overtrustful and enthusiastic apprentice. "One of +the most ignorant fellows I ever met," he wrote of him who never at any +time could have been congenial to his spirit. Many others appeared there +also--silently marked and measured in a way that would have astonished +them had they been worthy to know. + +Blake's time was not wholly spent in copying the works of others. In his +spare hours he threw off songs and designs of his own. These latter were +sometimes partly copies of a much-loved master. Thus, _Joseph of Arimathea +among the Rocks of Albion_ was suggested by Michael Angelo's Crucifixion +of St Peter in the Vatican, and the figure of Joseph is a copy.[1] Blake +himself had written "engraved by W. Blake, 1773, from an old Italian +Drawing"; "Michael Angelo, Pinxit." But already there is more of Blake in +this design than of his master. He wrote between the lines, "This is one +of the Gothic Artists who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark +Ages, wandering about in sheep-skins and goat-skins; of whom the World was +not worthy. Such were the Christians in all ages." From which we may +gather that Blake was fully conscious that his being a Christian--and his +Art was inseparable from his Christianity--had already consigned him to a +solitary life in which he might expect persecutions, but certainly not a +resting-place. + +Blake's apprenticeship with Basire came to a peaceful end in 1778, when he +was twenty-one years old. He was now a man, peering forward into a dim and +cloudy future, looking backward on a childhood of clearest visions that +were already passing, and as it was, according to all precedent, had +overstayed their time. One thing was entirely clear--he must earn his own +living. Another thing he was conscious of was that he was slowly and +surely leaving the past behind. Yet so far, seated amidst the ruins of the +Old World, he knew not whither his religious aspirations would lead him. +He had fine memories, he had religious and art instincts that refused to +be separated, he was finding himself daily in opposition to the admired +religionists and artists of his time, and he felt within the strength of +immense passion which would surely drive him to the building of the +heavenly Jerusalem if he could but get his vision clear again, and know +the path which God had before marked out for him to walk in. His vision +was to clear after many years. Meanwhile there were tempests and storms to +be endured that would reduce still more effectually to wreckage the last +remains of the Old World. That World had spoken with dignity and power +through the lips of Dr Johnson, who was himself breaking up and died in +1784. With the death of Johnson the Old World died, to reappear only in a +kind of after-mirage; and young Blake was struggling through the +tempestuous years of his passionate youth, turning with pain his eyes from +the Past to the Future, and wistfully hoping that the mighty creative +power that was already astir in him might fashion a new order in which he +and his fellows could live at peace. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +COMING OF AGE AND MARRIAGE + + +The Royal Academy is a British Institution which we all patronize once a +year, and then abuse that we may keep our self-respect. We go, impelled by +a sense of high duty; but we presently relax and take our pleasure in Bond +Street. In 1778 Bond Street did not lay itself out to encourage +revolutionary artists, and Burlington House was not yet finished. The +Royal Academy was turned out of Somerset Palace and was still waiting to +turn into its new quarters. + +Blake, on leaving Basire, immediately joined the Academy and studied in +the Antique School under Mr Moser. This was not an auspicious beginning. +Moser had scant respect for Michael Angelo and Raphael, while he extolled +to the skies the more fleshly works of Le Brun and Rubens. Some of us may +wish that Moser had taught Blake to admire Rubens. But an angel from +Heaven could not have done that. Clear outline was a necessity to keep him +sane; blurred outline always gave him nightmare. Only the mystic who loves +the flesh can rejoice in the roly-poly curves and tints of Rubens' fat +Venuses. Moser did his best, and being an old man of seventy-three, felt +he might advise a young man in his art studies. But Blake had now known +for some years what he really liked, and his impetuosity led him to speak +to Moser as if their positions were reversed. + +Blake drew at the Academy not only from the antique but from living +models. This was distasteful to him, because it was never his aim to +reproduce exact portraits of outward things. Always his imagination must +pierce through and illumine the object before him, and he found the posed +model baffled him in this attempt, and made him scent death rather than +life. + +These were crowded days for Blake. He could not continue to live under his +father's roof in Broad Street without contributing towards the household +expenses, and therefore he must do work of marketable value. To this end +he received orders for engraving from Johnson and other booksellers. It +was drudging work, and Blake was not without his full share of drudgery. +To engrave after Stothard was to set a lion to speak in a monstrous little +voice. But Stothard had his uses for Blake. Through a fellow-engraver +Blake was introduced to Stothard, who, still young, was making a guinea a +piece for his contributions to the _Novelist's Magazine_. Broad Street was +in the thick of the Artists and Royal Academicians. Once Blake had pierced +the magic circle and could meet them on equal terms, instead of merely +watching their exits and their entrances through the doors of Broad +Street, Poland Street, and Golden Square, they might prove of value to +him, not by teaching him to paint as they painted, but by helping him to +get customers for his own productions. Stothard had lately made the +acquaintance of Flaxman, who had sought him out, and he introduced Blake +to Flaxman, who in 1781 took a house at 27 Wardour Street and became +Blake's close friend and neighbour. + +At this time, in 1780, Blake threw off one of his very own magnificent +designs known as _Morning, or Glad Day_. It is the real Blake with only +one foot on earth, his head in a flood of light, and the symbols of his +grub state--caterpillar and moth--at his feet. The rays of the light are +darting north and south and east and west. Blake had weary years before +him to work out his salvation to Glad Day. This design makes it certain +that he already had had his glimpse of the end, and we shall find that he +was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. + +London was not without its excitements. Lord George Gordon headed the +No-Popery Riots in 1780, and through the unruly violence of the mob, +London was in a panic for a week. Lord George was arrested and imprisoned +in the Tower, where he was visited by the ubiquitous John Wesley, who +found him well instructed in the Bible and not disposed to complain. + +It is impossible to trace accurately what books Blake read at this time. +It is evident that he observed Wesley and Whitefield and admired much that +he saw in them. But his own religious genius was far removed from theirs, +and sought nourishment elsewhere. It is probable that he read Boehme, +Paracelsus, Fludd, Madame Guyon, and St Theresa in his spare hours. + +But there were other imperious needs surging up in him. The creative +passion of love was driving him hither and thither. With his tendency to +view all things in the light of eternity, he was passionately in love with +the eternal feminine, into which any pair of bright eyes would serve as +windows. The particular pair of eyes that captivated him belonged to "a +lively little girl" called Polly Wood, with whom he kept company for a +while. Polly's conversation was probably no more suitable as a permanent +entertainment to Blake than that of a modern flapper. Fortunately, she +understood little affairs of the heart much better than he did, not taking +them more seriously than they deserved; and when she saw symptoms of +tremendously earnest love-making threatening to engulf her, she quickly +shook him off with a sharp stroke, "Are you a fool?" and left him feeling +very lacerated and sorry for himself. + +Blake had not long to wait for another manifestation of the eternal +feminine. Recovering from an illness at Kew, where he was staying at the +house of a market-gardener named Boucher, he told his grief to the +gardener's daughter Catherine, who declared that she pitied him from the +heart. There was the authentic voice of the eternal feminine. "Do you pity +me?" he gasped. "Yes! I do most sincerely" the voice continued. "Then I +love you!" and his fate was sealed. William Blake and Catherine Boucher +were married quietly at St Mary's Church, Battersea, on August 18th, 1782, +and the happy pair, leaving their parental nests, made their first little +home together in lodgings at 23 Green Street, Leicester Fields. + +Blake's worldly goods with all of which he endowed his bride were not +plentiful. A portfolio of prints which had been growing in bulk during +fifteen years was his darling treasure. Money he had none. But he had +immense capacity for sustained application and work. His engravings made +small but sure returns, and for the last four years he had turned his +attention to water-colour, and in 1780 had even exhibited in the Royal +Academy. And he was making friends. Friend Flaxman lived near in Wardour +Street, friend Fuseli in Broad Street. Stothard was kind. A young man with +sanguine temperament like Blake might expect anything to turn up. + +His wife brought no gold with her; but she brought a faithful maternal +heart, unlimited faith in her husband, a teachable spirit, and a +willingness to turn her hand to all that was necessary to make and keep a +little home for the man-child of her heart. She had made her mark in +the marriage register of St Mary's Church. A woman with such endowments, +unspoilt by education, was virgin soil that would yield whatever her +husband willed. It was no long time before she learnt of him to write, +draw, and engrave, all of which acquirements she placed in perfect loyalty +at his disposal. + + +[Illustration: GLAD DAY.] + + +We have seen that Blake's circle of acquaintances widened much from the +day he became a student at the Royal Academy. But artists are not +necessarily in Society, and if one can believe what everyone says they are +apt to be bohemian. Now that Blake was a married man, he could not be +indifferent to the grades of the social ladder; and when Flaxman +introduced him to the elegant and cultured Mrs Mathew at 27 Rathbone +Place, he not only had hopes of a useful patron for himself, but also that +the accomplished lady might be a kind friend to his wife. She had been +truly kind to Flaxman for many years, and it is reasonable to suppose that +while benefiting him she had herself benefited by his pure classicism and +romanticism combined. Thus equipped, she needed only to extend her +sympathies towards mysticism, and then she might include even Blake +himself among her good works. But she and her sister Blue-stockings +deserve a chapter to themselves. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE BLUE-STOCKINGS + + +Posterity is spiteful towards those who do not make good their claim to +immortality; and for a long time the Blue-stockings have been the butt of +the superior modern. Yet they were remarkable women, and by their dash to +capture for themselves some of the treasures of man's learning they helped +to open up a new way for the modern woman. + +We can dispense no doubt with Mrs Montagu's _Essay_, in which she defends +Shakespeare against the rash onslaught of Voltaire. We may even forget her +three _Dialogues of the Dead_, although Mrs Modish speaks with the genuine +accent of the polite world: "Indeed, Mr Mercury, I cannot have the +pleasure of waiting upon you now, I am engaged, absolutely engaged." +(There was a fourth Dialogue returned to her by Lord Lyttelton in which +Cleopatra tells Berenice only what every woman knows.) But we cannot forgo +without loss to ourselves her letters to the Duchess of Portland and many +other friends, which are lively, witty, and entertaining, and second in +her time only to those of that prince of letter-writers, Horace Walpole. + +Mrs Montagu's friends did their best to turn her head. Mrs Carter writes +to her of "the elegant brilliancy of my dearest Mrs Montagu," and not +content with prose as a medium of praise, sends her an ode which leads up +by a strong crescendo to these two verses: + + "O blest with ev'ry talent, ev'ry Grace + Which native Fire, or happy Art supplies, + How short a Period, how confined a Space, + Must bound thy shining Course below the Skies! + + For wider Glories, for immortal Fame, + Were all those talents, all those Graces given: + And may thy life pursue that noblest aim, + The final plaudit of approving Heav'n." + +Mrs Carter thought that Dr Johnson's preface to Shakespeare was "very +defective," and she adds to Mrs Montagu, certain that her Latin will be +understood without the aid of a dictionary: "Res integra tibi reservatur." +Elsewhere she writes: "you, who have proved yourself the most accurate and +judicious of all his commentators." This opinion was shared by the entire +circle of Blue-stockings, and even outside that charmed circle the +Reverend Montagu Pennington, nephew of Mrs Carter and godson of Mrs +Montagu, felt that she was guilty of something like mortal sin in omitting +to defend the British Public against the pernicious influence of Lord +Chesterfield's _Letters to his Son_. + +Mrs Carter, loaded with languages, and much addicted to snuff and green +tea, was scarcely inferior to Mrs Montagu. She was modest and almost +apologetic for her much learning. She and the rest of the heady sisterhood +were not without misgivings that in pursuing man's studies they might +become manly, and therefore they never ceased to express in season and out +of season pious female sentiments. Indeed, Mrs Carter protested against +being thought of as a walking tripod, and was what used to be called "a +sweet woman." Thus she writes of "the infernal composition of deadly weeds +made up by Voltaire." _Candide_ was "so horrid in all respects." _Werther_ +she detested. She is relieved to hear that Pascal is "very respectable," +for she considered him "a dangerous author to all kinds of readers." +Rousseau "quite sunk her spirits." Of course her spirits were liable to +the same shock during her extensive readings among the ancients, and, +indeed, she said that Quintilian's impiety was "quite shocking"; but very +justly she considered that they were to be excused because they had not +the light of revelation, while Voltaire and Rousseau were sinning against +that light. + +Mrs Carter and Mrs Montagu fully agreed in their admiration for Mrs Vesey, +whom they familiarly called "our Sylph." Hannah More in her _Bas Bleu_ +seems to reckon her the first of the Blues, and specially commends her for +the skill she displayed in breaking the formidable circle that Mrs +Montagu's guests were forced to make. Her lively Irish nature was +refreshing to Mrs Carter, her head full and aching after a strenuous +tussle with Aristotle's _Ethics_. She wrote to Mrs Montagu: "As little of +the turbulent as there is in her (our Sylph's) composition, the uproar of +a mighty sea is as much adapted to the sublime of her imagination, as the +soft murmurs of a gliding stream to the gentleness of her temper." + +The conversaziones of the Blue-stockings were as successful as might be. +There was always a difficulty in procuring men. Dr Johnson could be baited +from time to time. Horace Walpole, driven by curiosity, appeared and +disappeared. At Mrs Ord's, 35 Queen Anne Street, where Fanny Burney met +"everything delectable in the Blue way," one catches a glimpse of Mr +Smelt, Captain Phillips, Dr Burney, Lord Mulgrave, Sir Lucas Pepys, and +the Bishop of London. The kindness and patronage of Lord Bath and Lord +Lyttelton could always be relied upon. Yet there was no full and easy +interchange of ideas with men. The time had not yet come. In France it had +been accomplished by the ladies who were willing to step beyond the bounds +of strict propriety, but the pious English Blues were the last to wish to +follow the example of their French sisters. And so their best chance of +getting a man was to catch one young and struggling whom they might +patronize and be kind to. + +In this way all the luck fell to Mrs Mathew, of 27 Rathbone Place. If Mrs +Montagu had the advantage of a rich and indulgent husband, Mrs Mathew +excelled all in the respectability of hers. The Reverend Henry Mathew was +incumbent of Percy Chapel, Charlotte Street, and afternoon preacher at St +Martin's-in-the-Fields. The latter church alone is sufficient to make a +man's reputation; but Mr Mathew had already made his both by his piety and +his taste. + +No one has such opportunities as one of the priesthood for discovering +promising young men. Mr Mathew's first find was little Flaxman struggling +with a Latin book. Learning the nature of the book, he promised him a +better and invited him to his house. Mrs Mathew herself was well read in +Latin and Greek, and here was a boy of genius thrown into her very lap. +Rising to the great occasion, she taught him, read to him while he +sketched, and by her treatment of him alone made more than amends for +being a Blue. + +When Flaxman was full grown he did all in his power to show his gratitude. +Mrs Mathew was desirous to turn her back parlour into a Gothic chamber. +Here was an opportunity. Flaxman modelled little figures of sand and +putty and placed them in niches. Another protege, Oram, son of old Oram +and Loutherbourg's assistant, painted the windows, and between them they +made the book-cases, tables, and chairs to match. With such a room, Mrs +Mathew might ask whom she would and not be ashamed. To her tea parties +came Mrs Montagu, Mrs Carter when staying in Clarges Street, Mrs Barbauld, +Mrs Chapone, Mrs Brooke, and many others. + +Blake and Flaxman first met in 1780 and soon became friends. Flaxman, by +native bent and Mrs Mathew's teaching, was steeped in Greek. By this time +he had shown himself wonderful alike in his designs and sculptures, and +already held a high place in what has been called the Second Renaissance. + +Blake was a romantic rather than a Greek, but as a later Greek, Goethe, +has assured us that there is no antagonism between a true romantic and a +true Greek, it is not surprising that the two men found a deep +congeniality of spirit. There was an even deeper fellowship, which became +explicit later on when both concurred in admiring Swedenborg. + +Flaxman, generously anxious that his friend should get on, introduced him, +in 1782, to Mr and Mrs Mathew, who asked him and Mrs Blake to their +evenings. And so at last we see rebel Blake and his illiterate wife in the +midst of a charmed circle of Blues who were mistresses of everything that +was learned, cultured, elegant, decorous, and _du bon ton_. + +Our first glimpse of Blake in Society we owe to John Thomas Smith, Keeper +of the Prints at the British Museum and frequent visitor at Mrs Mathew's. +He says in his _Book for a Rainy Day_: "At Mrs Mathew'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." + +That is a pleasant picture. Would that we had been there! But as time went +on several things became clear to Blake and likewise to the company, only +their interpretation of the situation differed. Mrs Blake proved a +touchstone to the other ladies. They of course could see at once that she +was not a lady, but that they must be kind to her. She, not having read +Mrs Chapone on the improvement of the mind or practised the elegancies, +was quite unable to imitate their manners and catch their tone. She was +throughout a simple, direct, noble woman set down in the midst of an +artificial society, and she was made to suffer accordingly. These things +sank deep into Blake, to reappear again as poems in his _Ideas of Good and +Evil_. Many times he himself felt the same discomfort both at Mrs Mathew's +and later at Mr Hayley's. The words he puts into Mary's (Catherine's) lips +he speaks in his own person in lines that he afterwards addressed to +Flaxman: + + "Oh, why was I born with a different face? + Why was I not born like this envious race? + Why did Heaven adorn me with bountiful hand, + And then set me down in an envious land?" + +Still Blake was "allowed by most of the visitors to possess original and +extraordinary merit." The songs he sang were inspired by his reading of +the Elizabethans, whom the Blues could appreciate. The _Poetical Sketches_ +came within the purview of professed admirers of Ben Jonson and Spenser; +and therefore Mrs Mathew could genuinely agree with Flaxman that it was +worth helping Blake to get them published. The _Poetical Sketches_ were +gathered together and printed at the expense of Flaxman and the Mathews, +Mr Mathew himself writing an apologetic _Advertisement_ which would save +his skin and lack of discernment if the pieces were unapproved by the +great Public. Since it is short, I will quote it entire: + +"The following sketches were the production of 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." + +It was hardly want of leisure that had prevented Blake from polishing his +verses. Mr Mathew had argued with him on the necessity, and he had proved +tiresomely obstinate, and, what is worse, remained of the same opinion +eight years afterwards when he wrote in _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_: +"Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement +are roads of Genius." + +Mr Mathew was but one of those Bunglers that "can never see perfection, +but in the journeyman's labour." However, he saved his name for his +generation and lost it for posterity. + +Blake's _Poetical Sketches_ were printed but not published. The copies +were handed over to him to give or sell, but they brought him neither fame +nor money. + +It is long since anyone doubted the worth of the _Poetical Sketches_. The +twentieth century wholly endorses the glowing and just criticism that +Swinburne wrote fifty years ago. It must have startled the stolid bookish +people of the 'sixties to be told that the best of Blake's _Poetical +Sketches_--_To Spring_, _To Memory_, _To the Muses_, _To the Evening +Star_--were comparable to the world's best in any age. Swinburne +frequently exaggerated in his excitement; but here was no exaggeration, +and the poems which were once thought by a partial friend "to merit some +respite from oblivion" are now reckoned among the chief pearls of great +price in England's rich treasury of Songs. + +There remains little more for the critic to say, but the biographer turns +to these _Sketches_ for any intimation of Blake's spiritual and mental +growth. + +We must not be misled by the "scent and sound of Elizabethan times" that +is upon them. It is of course interesting to the literary mind to discover +Ben Jonson in _How sweet I roamed_, Beaumont and Fletcher in _My Silks and +fine Array_, Webster in the _Mad Song_, and Shakespeare in _King Edward +the Third_; but these intimations of kinship are only such as are found in +original geniuses of the same age. That which gives life and immortality +and irresistible sweetness to the songs is Blake's own child-spirit seeing +with wide-eyed simplicity the simple commonplace things of this world that +God made, and that are to the pure in heart the immediate revelation of +Him. If in fashioning into Song the things that he saw Blake refuses the +artifice of his time and catches the scent and sound of a more robust age, +yet the prime inspiration was entirely his own; and we can only wonder +that such inspiration should have come to him while still a mere boy. + +The other pieces in the collection, though of much less importance, have +their interest. _Fair Elinor_ with the "silent tower," the "castle gate," +the "dreary vaults," and "sickly smells," like Horace Walpole's +_Mysterious Mother_ and _Castle of Otranto_, is not of the time but +anticipatory of the romantic horrors that Mrs Radcliffe was to make +entirely her own. _Gwen King of Norway_ and _King Edward the Third_ are +remarkable for their martial language. This was no accident. Blake was a +born fighter. The heroic side of War stirred his spirit, even though + + "The God of War is drunk with blood; + The Earth doth faint and fail: + The stench of blood makes sick the Heav'ns; + Ghosts glut the throat of Hell!" + +His feeling for England recalls old John of Gaunt's speech: + + "Lord Percy cannot mean that we should suffer + This disgrace: if so, we are not sovereigns + Of the sea--our right, that Heaven gave + To England, when at the birth of nature + She was seated in the deep; the Ocean ceas'd + His mighty roar, and fawning play'd around + Her snowy feet, and own'd his awful Queen." + +Grim War is a means to glorious liberty: + + "Then let the clarion of War begin; + I'll fight and weep, 'tis in my country's cause; + I'll weep and shout for glorious liberty. + Grim War shall laugh and shout, decked in tears, + And blood shall flow like streams across the meadows, + That murmur down their pebbly channels, and + Spend their sweet lives to do their country service: + Then shall England's verdure shoot, her fields shall smile, + Her ships shall sing across the foaming sea, + Her mariners shall use the flute and viol, + And rattling guns, and black and dreary war, + Shall be no more." + +Later on the War spirit in him, without diminishing, underwent a change. +It is still England's green and pleasant fields that he loves, and he +still longs for glorious liberty. This shall be effected by the building +of Jerusalem. But as the root of the evil is in man, the weapons of his +warfare become spiritual. Casting aside the rattling guns, he shouts: + + "Bring me my bow of burning gold, + Bring me my arrows of desire; + Bring me my spear; O clouds unfold! + Bring me my chariot of fire! + + I will not cease from mental fight + Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, + Till we have built Jerusalem + In England's green and pleasant land." + +For War breeds hate and every evil thing. Until we arouse ourselves and +fight like warriors the evil that is in ourselves, there can be no +glorious liberty, whether for England or any other nation of the world. + +The _Poetical Sketches_ were a failure. Mrs Mathew had generously tried to +help, but her influence was not wide. + +A magnificent opportunity had come to the Blue-stockings, and to Mrs +Montagu in particular, who with all her money and wide influence, which +she was always ready to use for her needy friends, might have helped quite +incalculably when Blake most needed it, and earned our undying gratitude. +Yet we must be just and not blame them for their lost opportunity. Their +significance lies in the fact that they objected to being perfect dunces +like the rest of their English sisters, and so they made a bold dash to +understand the things that men understand. They were not the first learned +women the world had seen. The ladies of the Italian Renaissance could have +given them points all round. Their work was that of restoration and not +revolution, and that was more than sufficient to occupy their thoughts and +energies without their peering into the new world that was at work in +Blake. When whiffs of the new spirit blew on them from Voltaire, Rousseau, +Goethe, and Hume, they were chilled and shocked, and thanked Heaven that +in Dr Johnson there was a champion who knew all about the new and stoutly +maintained the old. That was sufficient for them. Unfortunately they lived +at a time when Society was more than usually artificial and woman +suppressed, and the odd contrast between them and their sisters made them +appear to men somewhat as monsters, like singing mice or performing pigs. +The charge of being a Blue-stocking must always brand with a stigma, but +happily now that women are establishing their right to meet men on an +equality, the charge need never be made again. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +EARLY MARRIED LIFE AND EARLY WORK + + +We saw that William and Catherine Blake after their marriage settled at 23 +Green Street, Leicester Fields. This was in 1782. Here they remained for +two years, learning, not without pain, to adjust themselves to each other. +Mrs Blake's love was maternal and whole-hearted. Hers was not a nature to +question why love should involve the accepting of immeasurable cares. The +cares came one by one and not always singly, and she meekly and bravely +accepted them, contented to live her life in her husband's life, and happy +when she perceived that she could smooth his path and shelter him from +rough blasts. + +Blake at this time was an extraordinarily difficult man to live with. He +was by turns vehement, passionate, wildly self-assertive and submissive to +others far inferior to himself. His visions were less bright than they had +been, and his mind was choked with theories about the elemental things of +life that every woman understands by instinct. He was conscious of his own +genius and of the shortcomings of his successful contemporaries. His +rampant egotism sowed his consciousness with resentments that poisoned his +blood and bred bitterness. He made frantic efforts to grasp the liberty he +had seen from afar, but he only succeeded in confounding liberty with +licence, and peremptorily demanding the latter with his wife in a way that +was bound to give her pain. I will not attempt to lift further the veil +of their early married life. We have no right to pry. Mr Ellis has +constructed this period as far as is possible from the poems of Blake, and +to his _Real Blake_ I must refer the curious reader; but for my own part I +am content to note the signs of trouble in the various poems and not to +probe deeper into the secret things which no right-minded person can ever +wish to be proclaimed on the house-top. Suffice it to say that Mrs Blake's +self-forgetful love won the day, and when the early storms had passed, and +the adjustments been made, they were united by a bond which, untouched by +the fickleness of the flesh, could defy all shocks and changes because it +was founded on the enduring reality of the spirit. + +In the early years of married life Blake continued with his wife's company +the long walks which had been an early habit. Nothing could have been +better for him. Walking till he was tired, rhythmic swing of his arms, +unchecked sweating, did more than all else to cleanse his whole being and +to cause that uprise of the spirit which was eventually to bring unity and +peace to his chaotic and divided self. + +His marriage had disturbed another elemental relationship of life. His +father disapproved of it, and this led to an estrangement. We must admit +that the father had not acquitted himself badly of his paternal duties. It +is true he had foolishly wished to thrash him for reporting his visions, +believing that the boy lied; but he had helped him to be an artist, and +had never really opposed him when a boy. No one can reasonably demand more +of a father. Nature has no superstitions about parent birds when their +young have left the home nest. Gratitude and reverence to parents is still +a beautiful thing, and would doubtless be given spontaneously to them if +they could learn not to interfere when their children have grown up. + +It has often been affirmed that the old man was a student of Swedenborg. +If so, there had been at once a bond of sympathy between father and son. +But the truth is that he had not read much of Swedenborg for the simple +reason that he died four years before any theological work of importance +by Swedenborg was translated into English. Everything shows that the +father could not understand the son, who must have appeared to him +eccentric, headlong, and obstinate. When William heard on July 4th, 1784, +of his father's death, he paid all due respect to his memory, but he was +not moved by any violent grief. + +We do not suppose that Mr Blake made his fortune by hosiery, but he left a +little money which was divided among the sons. James took on the business +and the mother lived with him. William, assisted by Mrs Mathew (if we may +trust the testimony of J. T. Smith), took the house Number 27, next door +to his brother, and there he opened a print shop in partnership with +Parker, who had been a fellow-pupil at Basire's. Robert, who was teething +when we last saw him, was now grown up and proved understanding and +sympathetic of William's visionary point of view. It was agreed that +Robert should live with William at Number 27 and become his apprentice. + +Once more Blake was all mixed up with his immediate kith and kin. When one +remembers that he had no illusions about fathers and saw clearly that the +father of one's flesh might be the enemy of one's spirit, it seems +incredible that he should have planted himself and his wife next door to a +brother who was, he knew, an enemy to his spirit, and to a mother who +would hardly approve of the young wife, and who would not be behindhand +with her advice; but Blake was not strong in common sense, nor could he +keep his neck out of a noose until it had first nearly strangled him. + +Robert was a comfort to him, but he can only have added to Mrs Blake's +cares. For at this time William was passionately devoted to Robert, and +his feeling to his wife had not yet quite resolved itself into that +enduring comradeship which was to be his priceless treasure to the end of +his days. The oft-repeated tale of Mrs Blake's obedience when her husband +said peremptorily: "Kneel down and beg Robert's pardon directly, or you +will never see my face again," throws a searchlight on the whole +situation. One sees William's peril and Catherine's care, and how her +self-forgetful love was the one thing that could bring these discordant +elements into a lasting harmony. + +This arrangement lasted for two and a half years, when Robert fell +desperately ill. William nursed him tenderly, and during the last +fortnight sat with him day and night. At the end he saw Robert's soul rise +from his body, clapping its hands for joy as it ascended to its perfect +life of liberty. Then William, tired out, went to sleep, and did not wake +up till after three days and three nights. + +The print shop was not successful. Blake lacked the necessary business +quality, and the failure was aggravated by disagreements with Parker. The +partnership was dissolved, Parker going his own way, and engraving chiefly +after Stothard, and Blake closing the shop and retiring with his wife to +the other end of Poland Street, which joins Broad Street with Oxford +Street. There at Number 28 (now pulled down and replaced) the two, having +lost everything, set about in a nearer fellowship to retrieve their +fortunes and face the unknown future with as much courage as might be. + +Here it is necessary to review briefly Blake's works in engraving and +design. We have seen that his instinct when a boy led him directly to the +Masters of the Past who could guide him best until he came to himself. The +greatest of these were Michael Angelo and Albert Duerer. He did not at +first study these demigods and then adopt their principles. He formulated +his principles from his immediate experience of Reality, and then rejoiced +to find that the men he worshipped produced splendid examples of his +principles. First among these was the value of outline. His spiritual eye +being opened at a very early age, it was always self-evident to him that +the outer world was a vegetable mirror of the inner, and corresponded with +it even in the minutest details. If he saw in the outer colour and form, +he immediately looked at the inner for the reality of both; and to his +inexpressible joy he not only found what he sought, but also that they so +far transcended the outer things that he who saw only the outer could have +only the dimmest idea of the wondrous beauty and glory of the archetypes. +Hence, with his eye on the eternal outline, he declared consistently all +his life that the essence of a body is in its form, and that no man can be +a great artist who does not build up his art on the foundation of good +drawing. Oil as a medium blurred the outline, and therefore he preferred +to work in water-colour. But engraving even better than water-colour, +enabled him to apply his principle. It was simply incredible to him that +any engraver could undervalue drawing. If engraving lost drawing, it lost +all character and expression, and therefore his indignation was aroused +with the Woolletts and Bartolozzis, who in this respect were mortal +sinners. We can see that such a principle was a necessity for Blake with +his peculiar mind, and was even a safeguard to its sanity; but we have a +perfect right to observe that whatever obscures the outlines of things, as +twilight, also removes the barriers that hinder our approach to the +unseen, and therefore we may enunciate another principle, that one +property of a body is its contribution to atmosphere, with its power to +evoke our subjective selves. Holding this as a correlative to Blake's +axiom, we can do full justice not only to Michael Angelo, Albert Duerer, +Raphael, and Blake, but also to Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt, whom Blake +despised. Unfortunately, Blake held to his principle so rigidly that it +was apt to lead him into false admirations. We have seen how unduly he +admired Macpherson, and here we have to note further that whomsoever of +his contemporaries drew the human figure correctly he immediately extolled +to the skies, and always with oblique reference of disdain to others whom +we have come to think were intrinsically better artists. Hence he admired +Mortimer, whom we just remember as the illustrator of Fanny Burney's +_Evelina_, whose substantial immortality gives him vicarious and ghostly +existence. He also admired Hamilton. In the violent alternations of his +mood we have seen how submissive and meek he could be. In such a mood he +allowed Mortimer and Hamilton to influence him to such a degree that he +actually distrusted the genius in himself which could inspire _Glad Day_, +and produced such lifeless imitations of Mortimer's historical style as +the _Penance of Jane Shore_ (1778), _King Edward and Queen Elinor_ (1780), +and _Earl Godwin_ (1780). + +Blake's deferences were not always thus unfortunate. He appreciated +Hogarth for his intrinsic value at a time when respectable people +patronized him for pictured moralities. We cannot imagine a greater +contrast than Blake the frugal seer and Hogarth "the typical carnivorous +Englishman." Outline was their meeting-ground. Hogarth saw, we may say +detected, in the scenes that marked the progresses of the Rake and the +Harlot, a full pulsing life and an unexpected beauty. When he would +express what he saw, with a mighty stretch he shook off all foreign +influences and set about to express himself naturally and in his own way. +His hand appropriated to its use the power of the line, more particularly +the vitality of the curved line, with the amazing result that the moment +we forget his "moralities," we see in him an exuberant artist of the +beautiful. Blake was wholly with him in all this. We rejoice for the +seeing eye that Blake and Hogarth cast on the shady side of life, but our +wonder and amazement pass into worship when we perceive that this was +included in the vision of Him who was called in derision the Friend of +Publicans and Sinners, but was contented to speak of Himself as the Son of +Man. + +Blake affirmed that Hogarth's execution could not be copied or improved. +He borrowed from his _Satan, Sin and Death at Hell's Gate_, which is +hardly one of Hogarth's masterpieces, for a water-colour of the same +subject, and he engraved, after Hogarth, _When my Hero in Court Appears_ +in the Beggar's Opera (1790). + +Blake produced two water-colours in 1784 which show that his thoughts on +war were already undergoing a change. These are _War unchained by an +Angel--Fire, Pestilence and Famine following_, and _A Breach in a +City--the Morning after a Battle_. + +Blake had been watching closely the course of affairs on the other side of +the Atlantic. While men's minds were becoming more and more inflamed with +the thought of war, he was criticizing it with the searching rays of his +spiritual vision and finding himself compelled to revise his ideas, which +he had taken without question from Shakespeare, and had expressed in the +_Poetical Sketches_. Then, in spite of seas of blood, he glorified war; +now, as he began to consider the abominations that it lets loose on +overburdened mankind--Fire, Pestilence and Famine--he included it in the +abominations as a thing altogether useless and despicable. He felt a +peculiar joy when peace was this year signed with the North American +States. + +During these years (1773-84) Blake accomplished an immense amount of +engraving, chiefly after Stothard. These engravings must come as a +surprise to those who only know his own sublime designs, that reveal +might, power, terror, and immense energy, and not the softer things that +we associate with grace. It is sufficient to mention those plates that +Blake engraved after Stothard in Ritson's _English Songs_ to show that he, +like Michael Angelo and Milton, could do not only the works that call for +massive power, but also the graceful and lovely things that can be done by +genius not quite so rare. But I must leave the consideration of Blake's +relation, personal and artistic, to Stothard to a later chapter, when I +come to speak about the _Canterbury Pilgrims_. + +Blake's songs, poems, and designs came to birth side by side. Where the +engravings were not after his own designs, but after other artists, he +knew exactly what to do with them. But sooner or later, as his own +productions of wedded poem and design grew under his hands, the anxious +question of publication arose, and by this time it was perplexingly clear +to him that his spiritual productions were not for every taste, and that +it would be difficult to find anyone who would run the risk of being his +publisher. His _Poetical Sketches_ were printed, though not published, +through the kindness of Mrs Mathew, but there was no likelihood that any +of the Blue-stockings would be kind in a helpful way to him again. + +While pondering this difficulty day and night, and increasingly urged by +poverty, his brother Robert came to him and directed him what he was to +do. He told him to write his poems and designs on copper with an +ineffaceable liquid, and with aquafortis to eat away the remainder of the +plate until the writing and designs were left in clear relief. Then he +might take as many copies as he liked, and just touch them up by hand. + +According to Gilchrist, Mr and Mrs Blake possessed just half-a-crown, with +which Mrs Blake went out and bought the necessary materials, returning +with eightpence change in her pocket. At once they set to work, the wife +proving an apt pupil, and thus, with the exception of _The French +Revolution_, Blake engraved and published his own creations, experiencing +the rare joy of being at once both the creator and the handicraftsman of +his works. + +Robert visited William continually to the end of his life, bringing him +consolation and encouragement during times of anxiety and stress. + +These supernatural happenings in the life of Blake read as simply and +naturally as the beautiful stories of St Francis converting brother Wolf +or receiving the sacred stigmata. There was nothing of the modern +spiritualist's paraphernalia--no medium, no trance, no tappings. Blake was +born with his inner spiritual eye open, his outer bodily eye, contrary to +general custom, proving sluggish. Hence he was able to keep a natural +simplicity amidst things which are too apt to stir only the thaumaturgic +appetite of other people. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +WESLEY, WHITEFIELD, LAVATER, AND SWEDENBORG + + +Blake's manifold nature lacked, so far, a co-ordinating principle. From +his earliest years religion had been a reality to him, and so had art, +music, literature, but not one of these was so dominant over the rest as +to make them subservient. Each lived its separate life and was likely to +continue to do so, unless his religion could become forceful and definite +enough to penetrate the others and bind them into a higher unity. + +His religion had been fed by vision. His visions came to him so naturally +that it never occurred to him that others might regard them as symptoms of +abnormality or insanity. The thrashing that his father gave him when he +told at home what he had seen at Peckham Rye was a memorable occasion, +like conversion to some people, only it opened his outer eye and not his +inner. + +The visions made several things clear to his understanding. He early +distinguished between inner and outer vision, supernatural and natural +religion. Religion was never a matter of opinion, always of experience. +Christ's language was also his own, "We speak that we do know, and testify +that we have seen." He felt the same mild surprise at hearing religion +denied as he would at the denial of the sun by a blind man. But the reason +of such blindness was also quite clear to him. Spiritual things are +spiritually discerned. The spiritual man sought no other evidence than +that of his spiritual discernment. If the natural man were ever to arrive +at spiritual vision, it must be by a new birth of the Spirit. Thus Blake +knew from the beginning the inward meaning of Christ's words to Nicodemus, +"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born again, he cannot see +the Kingdom of Heaven.... That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that +which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Blake was never in danger at any +time in his life of becoming enmeshed in natural religion. His escape was +more instinctive if less effectual than that of his philosophical +contemporary who sought to combat his difficulties by working out an +elaborate analogy between natural and revealed religion. + +The man who knows by experience what it is to be born again knows also how +clamorous the new life within is for nourishment. Blake was driven to the +mystics for food. We know by his repeated references in his long poems +that St Theresa, Madame Guyon, Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme fed his +supersensual life. But besides appealing to the past, he looked around to +listen to what his contemporaries had to say to him. It is evident that he +would listen only to those who were as clear as himself on the experience +of the new birth. + +It is not surprising that the high church divines of the eighteenth +century had little to say for him. They were more eager to show to the +leaders of the enthusiastic methodist party that regeneration took place +in Holy Baptism than to make sure that they had exhausted its meaning in +their experience. Their views might be extremely correct; but anything +more dull and uninspiring than their sermons and collected works could +hardly be found. Blake had no need to examine them particularly, for the +best high churchman of the time was Dr Johnson, and he already had his eye +on him. + +Dr Johnson to the end was a particular kind of grand schoolmaster. He +believed in the Christian revelation fervently, and he believed, also with +fervour, in the rod, in Latin, in scholarship, and in the drastic +repression of the young. He who declared that he would never disgrace the +walls of the Abbey by writing for it an epitaph in English, could hardly +have seen anything worth his notice in the ignorant Blake and his still +more ignorant wife; and Blake in his turn, unnoticed and unknown, living a +severely abstemious life, was too apt to ruminate on Johnson's gluttony +and pension, and to conclude that the latter was a reward for barren +learning. + +It is as well that Johnson and Blake never met. Neither could have worked +through his prejudices. They lived in a different world, and moved from a +different centre. Johnson viewed the wreckage of the Old World, and then +with undaunted courage and indomitable will set himself to build out of +the wreckage a covering for himself and his friends. Blake, conscious that +dawn was stirring on the wreckage of the dark night, was straining his +vision to catch the outline of the new emerging world. Johnson's was a +superb mind working within too narrow bounds. Blake's was so far the +promise of an unimagined type. We who look backward over the lapse of a +hundred years can reverence both men, but it is Blake who is the more +inspiring and fruitful. + +One other high church divine, William Law, Blake should have read, but +strangely makes no mention of. Law's _Serious Call to a Devout and Holy +Life_ and his _Christian Perfection_ were more likely to appeal to Johnson +than to Blake, but the later books, _The Spirit of Prayer_ and _The Spirit +of Love_, written after he had come under the influence of Boehme, while +estranging him from Johnson and Wesley, might have brought him and Blake +face to face. Both books are more beautiful than anything written by +Wesley, Whitefield, or Swedenborg. Perhaps, as Blake already had read +something of Boehme, he found that Law had nothing to add to his +knowledge. + +There is ample evidence that Blake turned his full attention on to Wesley, +Whitefield, and Hervey, and watched them with sympathy. These men were +proclaiming everywhere the need of being born again. No one met Blake so +definitely on what he had always seen clearly, with large, childlike +vision. When Samuel Foote, representative of a thousand others, carelessly +threw the epithet "hypocrite" at Whitefield's head, Blake was indignant, +and accurately designated the actor as the hypocrite. With perfect justice +he pointed out that if Whitefield confessed his sins before all the world, +and never pretended to be free from the passions that burn in other men, +he was certainly an honest and sincere man. To pounce on a Christian who +inadvertently falls, and call him a hypocrite, is as usual now as in +Blake's day, but it comes with astonishing gracelessness from the lips of +those who have spent their youthful passions in wanton waste, and, wearied +and bored, are bidding for a respectable middle age. + +Whitefield had pungent things to say to respectable moralists. He had no +milder term than "filthy rags" for their dull moralities. If he sought to +cover his nakedness with the garment of Christ's righteousness, Blake, +while using a different phrase, perfectly understood him and sympathized. +But then came the divergence. Whitefield's doctrine of the new birth was +inextricably bound up with crude doctrines of Christ's substitutionary +death and imputed righteousness, and Blake, who had experienced the new +birth quite apart from faith in these particular Calvinist dogmas, felt no +need to cling to what his instinctive feeling rejected; and, what with +him was final, he found that Whitefield not only left his aesthetic +faculties starved, but actually believed that as the arts came from Tubal +and Tubal-cain, and they were descended from Cain, who had been cursed, +they must necessarily have their origin from hell. + +Hervey carried Blake as far as Whitefield, and no farther. Some years +later, when Blake had diverged widely from Whitefield and Hervey, he still +remembered them with tenderness and affection; and placing them with +Fenelon, Madame Guyon, St Theresa (an odd assortment!), saw them at Los' +South Gate, "with all the gentle souls who guide the great Wine-press of +Love."[2] + +Blake found that he could keep company with Wesley for a longer time. +Wesley had no rigid Calvinism, and he was not content unless imputed +righteousness should pass by a second blessing into imparted holiness. +Here also Blake's language was wholly different from Wesley's, but the +thing he arrived at--the unification of all his powers under the +inspiration and creative force of his imagination--led him along a path +very like that trodden by Wesley and his methodists as they pressed +towards the goal of entire sanctification. It is important to go behind +words to things, but it is equally important to come back to a form of +sound words. The methodists have been imprisoned by their wordy formulae, +while Blake by his vision of the things behind words not only preserved +his freedom, but also, by freeing his imagination, was enabled to create +beautiful rhythmic words which invoke instead of imprison. + + +[Illustration: JOHN GASPAR LAVATER. + +_Engraved by Blake._] + + +Among his contemporaries Blake discovered a deeper kinship with Lavater +than with any of these. Whitefield and Wesley had succeeded in reviving +in themselves the first glow and enthusiasm of protestantism. Lavater is +once removed from his zealous protestant forefathers, and the things that +they had repressed were making their reappearance in him. Among these was +the feeling for the beautiful, which, as he welcomed and nourished it, +deepened his sympathies and enlarged his outlook. What he lost in fiery +zeal he gained in geniality. He had a constant perception of the truth +that outward things are an index to inner conditions and correspond with +them. This prompted him to observe the faces of his fellow-creatures and +to attempt a system of physiognomy. His instinctive reading of faces was +often astonishingly correct; but his makeshift system has no value. More +to the point are his aphorisms, which were read and annotated by Blake, +and these are sufficient both to reveal Lavater and bring certain lasting +convictions of Blake's into a clear light. I will take a few of the more +important. + +_Sin and destruction of order are the same._ + +Blake comments: "A golden sentence." He had felt for many years that all +repression was futile. What is repressed comes out again in the wrong +place. The last state of the repressed man is worse than his first. Blake +was not yet quite clear about what was the alternative to repression, but +he was sure that sin was disorder. How he resolved the disorder we shall +see later on. + +_As the interest of man, so his God. As his God, so he._ + +Blake: "All gold." + +He preferred the word "will" to "interest." "Will" is identical with +Swedenborg's "affection" and Boehme's "desire." No one has worked out the +correspondence of the "heart" with the "will" so effectually as +Swedenborg. Blake knew that to discover the will was to discover the man. +A man can change only as he changes the object of his will. When his will +is towards God, his powers fall into order and he becomes a saint. + +_The greatest of characters no doubt would be he who, free of all trifling +accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium +always at hand and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every +object in its true shape and colour, through all the fluctuation of +things._ + +Blake: "This was Christ." + +He knew both as an artist and a mystic that the appearance of objects is +according to the state of the beholder. This is true of the objects not +only of the outer world but also of the inner, and therefore only the +witness of a perfect man is trustworthy. The visions of all others must be +corrected by the vision of the Christ. + +_Who has witnessed one free and unrestrained act of yours has witnessed +all._ + +Underlined by Blake. + +Strained action was an abhorrence to Blake. Only those acts are beautiful +that are impulsive, and they are they that reveal the man. + +_Between the best and the worst there are, you say, innumerable +degrees--and you are right. But admit that I am right too in saying that +the best and the worst differ only in one thing--in the object of their +love._ + +Blake: "Would to God that every one would consider this." + +It was considered and maintained by Swedenborg, Boehme, Fenelon, and +constantly by St Catherine of Siena, who to the "God is Love" of St John +added "Man is love also." + +_Keep him at least three paces distant who hates bread, music, and the +laugh of a child._ + +Blake: "The best in the book." + +_He who adores an impersonal God has none, and without guide or rudder +launches on an immense abyss that first absorbs his powers and next +himself._ + +Blake: "Most superlatively beautiful, and most affectionately holy and +pure. Would to God that all men would consider it." + +His faith in a personal God was his lifelong inspiration in religion and +art. This must guard him against the charge of pantheism made against him +by the Swedenborgian Garth Wilkinson and our fleshly poet Swinburne. Yet +he never thought out his position clear of pantheism. Swedenborg +worshipped a personal God and regarded man and nature as emanations from +God removed by varying degrees. But no matter how many degrees, continuous +or discrete, one removes ultimates from God, yet if they are essentially +emanations from Him, they must be of the same substance, and this is +pantheism. Catholic theology has grappled far more effectually with this +ancient difficulty than either Swedenborg or Blake. + +_All abstraction is temporary folly._ + +Blake: "I once thought otherwise, but now I know it is truth." Let those +who confound mysticism with abstraction note this. + +Blake perceived in Lavater the innocence of a child, and loved him +accordingly; but he had already surpassed him, and thus was able to +criticize him with true discernment. He said that Lavater made "everything +originate in its accident." But a man's sins are accidents and not a part +of his real nature. They are a denial of his real man, and therefore are +negative. Hence he says: "Vice is a great negation. Every man's leading +propensity ought to be called his leading Virtue and his good Angel." This +last sentence contains Nietzsche. Every positive act is virtue. Murder, +theft, backbiting, undermining, circumventing, are vicious because they +are not positive acts, but prevent them in the perpetrator and the victim. +He put his finger on Lavater's other mistake, which was also shared by his +contemporaries. "They suppose that Woman's Love is Sin. In consequence, +all the loves and graces, with them, are sins." Blake not only here +outstrips his contemporaries, but at a leap reaches what are the +conclusions of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth, men and women +racked their brains over the irreconcilable dualism of art and religion, +and they chose one or the other, with baneful results. Blake reconciled +the two when he saw that the new man in us, unveiled by regeneration, +worked by direct vision (religion), and that the new man's prime quality +was imagination (art). Once he grasped this, the problem ceased for him. + +Here we get at the reason why Lavater has ever failed to keep his lovers. +Moses Mendelssohn, disciplined in the severe scholastic methods of +Maimonides, easily vanquished him in religious controversy; but men who +were less directly concerned with his religion, like Goethe, began by +exaggerating his qualities and ended by quietly dropping him. It is clear +to us that Lavater could keep our allegiance only if he had taken a big +step forward in the same direction as Blake. This was impossible, and so +we find ourselves obliged to follow Goethe's example. + +Swedenborg's influence was the greatest and most lasting on Blake's mind. + +It is not clear when Blake first took to reading Swedenborg. There is no +trace of his influence until _The Songs of Innocence and Experience_. Some +of Swedenborg's early scientific works had been translated into English. +But of his theological works only one volume out of twelve of the _Arcana +Celestia_ was published in English; and, for the rest, those who could not +read Latin had to be content with samples. Since Swedenborg bulked so +largely in Blake's life, it is necessary to give here some details of his +mental and spiritual development. + +Swedenborg's father was a Lutheran Bishop. Thus the son, in his most +impressionable years, was thrown among Lutherans, who maintained a +strenuous protest against the errors of the papacy, and fed or starved +their souls with dreary doctrines of justification by faith only, imputed +righteousness, and other forensic privileges that came to them through the +substitutionary death and merits of Christ. In all these dogmas the young +Swedenborg was well drilled. But his first bent was in quite another +direction. While still a boy he manifested a scientific mind of immense +energy and curiosity that peered searchingly into all the sciences of his +time, and won for himself a wonderful knowledge of anatomy, astronomy, +mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, mineralogy, and led him to make +interesting experiments in invention, such as water-clocks and flying +machines. He wrote many books on these subjects, the best known of which +in England is _The Animal Kingdom_. Here his interest is greatly stirred +by things physical and psychological, and he is fired with the ambition to +unite the two. Not, however, till he was fifty-four did his first interest +pass over to the things of the soul. When this transition took place, he +peered with the same intense scrutiny into supersensual things, and +brought to bear on them a mind formed and informed by science and +scientific methods. + +He took up the Lutheran tenets precisely where he had left them, but, no +longer a child, he was forced to criticize what he had once felt, and he +set himself to rationalize Lutheran theology and such elements of catholic +theology as had survived through Luther. In this he was not always so +successful as he imagined. His doctrine of the Trinity, that Jesus Christ +is the One God and that the Trinity is in Him, gets over an arithmetical +difficulty, but finally leaves the imagination baffled, trying to make out +how Jesus carried on the government of the universe while He lay a +helpless infant in the manger or His mother's arms. His reaction against +all outside views of Christ's death, imputed righteousness, and faith +only, was more successful, but not new, since in this the quakers in +England and Jacob Boehme were before him. Nor was his contention that love +was the supreme good new to those who had read through the New Testament. +His doctrine of uses was merely a theological variation of that +utilitarianism which is inseparable from rationalism, and which casts over +everything a drab veil that only the artist can remove. He is really at +his best when he expatiates on love and wisdom. Love corresponds with the +heart, wisdom with the lungs. As the heart sends the blood to the lungs, +where it is purified by the oxygen, so love feeds the understanding, and +is in turn purified by it. Swedenborg's perception of wisdom begotten of +love inspired his best passages and gave them their authentic import. + +Swedenborg gazed inwards so intently that after an initial period of +unrest, terrors, and nightmares his inner eye opened, and he saw into the +realities of the inner world. For the moment I take his word for it, and +will question later on. His open eye saw into heaven and hell, gazed into +the faces of angels and of God, and his opened ear heard the angels +speaking things he could understand and utter. At once he rationalized. He +stripped even the celestial angels of all mystery as well as of garments, +and traced them back to an earthly pedigree. Angels are men, and when they +talk they are no more interesting than the elders of a Lutheran +congregation. God also is a man--not, be it observed, the Man of a crude +anthropomorphism, but infinite, omnipotent Man, from Whom each man, +created in His image (will) and likeness (understanding), draws his real +manhood. He carried this doctrine into his rationalized version of the +Incarnation. Christ assumed human nature in the womb of the Virgin, and by +His conquering life put it off, replacing it by the Divine Humanity. The +last phrase has accomplished yeasty work in modern religious thought. How +many are aware of its origin? + +Swedenborg throws out many suggestive remarks about hell. Certainly it was +high time that it was looked into, for the protestant hell was as horrible +and revolting as the catholic. He began by lifting himself out of space +and time. He was soon brought by necessity to perceive that when these no +longer exist, then all appearances depend upon a man's state, and +therefore state governs the perceptions whether of the angels in heaven or +the devils in hell. Hell, like heaven, is peopled entirely from earth. No +one goes there but by his own choice, and he chooses because he finds +there exactly what is congenial to his own condition. Swedenborg +eliminated anything arbitrary in man's destiny. Fitness decides by an +inexorable law that God could evade only by ceasing to be God. +Swedenborg's hell is a filthy and insanitary place, but the filthy +inhabitants are no more disturbed by that than rats in a sewer. He +further declared that heaven and hell were born together, and that they +are contraries necessary to each other's existence. Blake underlined and +commented on this in his copy of the _Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine +Love_. How the suggestion worked in him we shall see later on. + +Swedenborg's hell is filthy and his heaven dull. There are further +surprises when we through his mediumship glimpse their inhabitants. The +angels, of course, are all sound Swedenborgians, and are attractive or +repellent according to Swedenborg's attraction or repulsion for us. But +the devils, not being Swedenborgians, can command an audience of the +majority of Christians who agree with them in their non-allegiance. What +Blake discovered in them was a wonderful energy and exuberance which made +them not only more attractive than the angels, but also, except for the +stenches, might almost have transformed their hell into heaven. + +By this time Swedenborg had explored many kingdoms--mineral, vegetable, +animal, human, divine, hellish; and his knowledge of the kingdoms informed +him of universal correspondences, the law of which came to him thus +freshly from his own observation. It was probably this which made him +assert so often that he was announcing something new, for with his culture +he must have known that Paracelsus had perceived the same law like +hundreds before him, and that Boehme wrote a treatise on the _Signatures_ +of all things. + +Perhaps Swedenborg's most fruitful apprehension was that of the Divine +Influx. All creatures live as they receive out of the Divine fullness. +They have no inherent or self-existent life of their own. The Lord alone +is self-existent, and they live by a derived life. This happens to be +catholic theology too, and it kept Swedenborg away from a misty pantheism. +Men and angels live, move, and have their being in God. They are immersed +in an ocean of life and light which pours forth from the Lord of the +Universe. The moment they feel their need and are humble enough to turn to +the Lord they become receptive. Filled with the spirit of life and light, +they love and understand, and remain full so long as they humbly abide in +Him. Perhaps no modern has grasped this truth so completely as Swedenborg. +It almost made him a mystic. Almost, yet not quite, for his fundamental +desire was to bring all the mysteries of the faith down to the level of +man's understanding. He eschewed a faith that rested on what could not be +understood. He did not see that in tearing away veil after veil he turned +heaven along with earth into a laboratory. The true mystic loves to know +that all things, including his faith, run up into mystery; and if an angel +succeeded in laying bare the last mystery, the mystic would find himself +in hell. + +Swedenborg attempted to bring reason and order into things spiritual, and +he believed that he had succeeded; but what really happened was that he +confounded the workings of his own subliminal mind with the action of the +Lord's, and in 1775, when he had effected reason and order in the +intermediate world of spirits to his own satisfaction, he declared that +the last judgment had taken place, that the New Jerusalem had descended +down out of Heaven, and that he was the divinely appointed prophet of the +New Church. + +He was not long publishing the doctrine of the New Church concerning the +Sacred Scriptures. He knew as well as any modern critic what are the +difficulties in the way of accepting the doctrine of verbal inspiration, +yet he affirmed it. There is a further difficulty that we feel more +acutely than he in the protestant dogma "the Bible and the Bible only." +If we are cut off from memory or tradition, and are obliged to form our +image of the historical Jesus from the Bible only, it is next to +impossible to make that image shine forth with clear, sharp outlines. The +difficulty is still further increased when protestantism, pushed to its +logical extreme, eliminates the supernatural element, and tries to piece +together the character of Jesus from the fragments that remain. + +The Bible imperiously demands a theory that shall make its heterogeneous +contents cohere. The four evangelists presuppose a knowledge of Jesus that +they aim at making more perfect. These are difficulties that protestantism +was destined to feel acutely from the day it proudly rejected tradition. +No doubt, if Providence had so intended, the portrait of Jesus would have +been drawn so completely that without the aid of memory we could have +gained a knowledge of Him such as we have of no other man that ever lived. +But the fact remains that Jesus wrote no book and no letters, and He +founded nothing but a handful of illiterate disciples to preach His gospel +and perpetuate His memory. These were so confident that Israel would +repent and believe the Gospel, and so make possible the immediate return +of their Lord, that they never thought of taking to their pens; and it was +only when they grew alarmed at the increasing thinness of the apostolic +ranks that they committed their memories to wise scribes or to parchment. +Thus we owe the Gospel accounts not to the express commands of Jesus, but +to the first bitter disappointment of the apostolic band. + +The simple truth, of course, is that the New Testament Scriptures cannot +be understood apart from the Catholic Faith that gave them birth, and +therefore when the faith is not confessed a theory must be found to take +its place. + +The history of higher criticism is the history of a succession of +theories. Dr Paulus, forgotten father of German critics, supplied a +rational one, for which he was obliged to make a super-historical use of +the Essenes. It has reappeared in George Moore's _Brook Kerith_. + +Renan, pantheist, artist and sceptic, tried to supply a subjective +artistic explanation which soothed the subject, but turned the Object into +a Frenchman. Strauss, Keim and Bousset, learned and painstaking, with +hardly less success made Him into a dreamy cosmopolitan German of a now +obsolete type. Schweitzer, better informed of the apocalyptic and +eschatological medium through which the mind of Jesus worked, comes nearer +to the apostolic mind that drew the picture of Jesus, yet, for want of the +key, portrays Jesus as the tragic victim of the illusory time-spirit. + +Swedenborg never gave any serious consideration to the catholic theory, +but supplied its place out of the store of his supersensual revelations. +Loaded with these, and with a vague memory of the gnostic teaching of the +threefold meaning of the Scriptures, he was able to evade every literal +difficulty by turning to the spiritual meaning, and if need be to the +celestial, which could be reached only through his own specific +revelation. It is true that he tried to bring a steadying factor into his +subjective interpretation by introducing his doctrine of correspondences; +but as he has never been able to convince any but his elect followers that +his correspondences, beyond some obvious ones, are other than arbitrary, +he has succeeded only in making his commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, and +the Apocalypse unreadable to the vast majority of Christians. + +I have said enough about Swedenborg to make it clear that there was some +affinity between him and Blake. + +Blake's imperfect knowledge of him was much deepened in 1788, when he read +his _Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and concerning the Divine +Wisdom_. This he marked and annotated, and so we are able to trace the +affinity in considerable detail. + +On the whole Blake gives almost passionate approval to _The Angelic +Wisdom_. Only in rare instances does he differ. Swedenborg's doctrine of +state made explicit what Blake had vaguely perceived all his life. It also +helped him to formulate a theoretic explanation of his own supersensual +vision. This is so important that I must quote an entire paragraph from +_The Angelic Wisdom_, for the sake of Blake's comment and the reader's +understanding. + +69. THE DIVINE FILLS ALL THE SPACES OF THE UNIVERSE APART FROM SPACE. +_There are two things proper to nature,_ SPACE _and_ TIME. _Out of these +man in the natural world forms the ideas of his thought and therefore his +understanding. If he remains in these ideas and does not raise his mind +above them he is nowise able to perceive anything spiritual and Divine, +for he involves them in ideas which derive from space and time; and in +proportion as he does this, the light--the lumen--of his understanding +becomes merely natural. To think from the lumen in reasoning about +spiritual and Divine things, is like thinking from the thick darkness of +night concerning the things which appear only in the light of day. This is +the origin of naturalism. But he who knows how to raise his mind above the +ideas of thought which derive from space and time, passes from thick +darkness into light, and apprehends spiritual and Divine things, and, at +last, sees those things which are in them and from them, and then by +virtue of that light he disperses the thick darkness of the natural lumen, +and relegates its fallacies from the middle to the sides. Every man with +an understanding is able to think, and actually does think, above those +properties of nature; and then he affirms and sees that the Divine, being +omnipresent, is not in space. He is also able to affirm and to see those +things which have been adduced above. But if he denies the Divine +Omnipresence and ascribes all things to nature, then he is not willing to +be elevated, although he is able._ + +In the above Blake changed the word _middle_ into _centre_, and _sides_ +into _circumference_, commenting: "When the fallacies of darkness are in +the circumference they cast a bound about the infinite." In paragraph 70, +Swedenborg adds what is a corollary to the above: _Angels do not +comprehend when we say that the divine fills spaces, for they do not know +what spaces are, but they understand when we say that the divine fills all +things._ On this Blake makes the comment "Excellent." + +Since the inhabitants of heaven have no idea of space and time, their +perceptions and modes of thought are entirely governed by their state. +This is true also of the visionary, and it decides what he reports of the +other world. Everyone will easily perceive from this of what paramount +importance his state is in assigning the right value to his visions. As +Swedenborg says: "Spaces and times in spiritual life have relation to +states of love and are mutable with these." + +Blake fully approved of Swedenborg's doctrine that the heart and lungs +correspond to the will and understanding. Those who would understand Blake +must remember this while reading the prophetic books. + +But there are signs of disagreements that deepened with time. + +Swedenborg wrote (237): _Man at birth comes first into the natural degree, +and this increases in him by continuity, according to his various +knowledge ... until he reaches the highest point of the understanding +which is called the rational. But still the second degree, which is the +spiritual, is not opened by this means. This is opened by love towards the +neighbour ... the third degree by love towards the Lord._ + +With all Blake's devout admiration for Swedenborg this was too much for +him. A child born solely into the natural degree! That! after all Blake +knew, and all Christ had said about little children! Heaven save us all, +especially Swedenborg! Blake's comment is important. Note that even when +he is differing from his teacher, his language is Swedenborgian. He says: + +"Study science till you are blind. Study intellectuals until you are cold. +Yet science cannot teach intellect. Much less can intellect teach +affection. How foolish it is then to assert that man is born in only one +degree, when that one degree is receptive of the three degrees: two of +which he must destroy or close up or they will descend. If he closes up +the two superior, then he is not truly in the third but descends out of it +into mere Nature or Hell. Is it not also evident that one degree will not +open the other, and that science will not open intellect, but that they +are discrete and not continuous so as to explain each other, except by +correspondence, which has nothing to do with demonstration, for you cannot +demonstrate one degree by the other, for how can science be brought to +demonstrate intellect without making them continuous and not discrete?" + +There are three comments in which Blake introduces an element lacking in +the voluminous writings of Swedenborg. On Swedenborg's statement: "A +spiritual idea does not derive anything from space, but it derives its +all from state," he remarks: "_Poetic_ idea"; on paragraph 10, Blake +comments: "He who loves feels love descend into him, and if he is wise, +may perceive it from the _Poetic Genius_, which is the Lord"; on +Swedenborg's phrase: "The negation of God constitutes hell," he remarks: +"The negation of the _Poetic Genius_." + +Here we get a hint of a small seed of difference which when fully grown +was to sever Blake from Swedenborg for ever. + +I must give one more, very pregnant, passage from _The Angelic Wisdom_. + +68. _Man out of his hereditary evil reacts against God. But if he believes +that all his life is from God, and all good of life from the action of +God, and all evil of life from the reaction of man, then reaction becomes +the offspring of action, and man acts with God as from himself. The +equilibrium of all things is from action and joint reaction, and +everything must be in equilibrium._ + +The last sentence makes hell an eternal necessity to preserve the +equilibrium of heaven. Strictly it makes also the devil an eternal +counterweight to God, and what else follows we may learn by studying +Zoroastrian dualism. Blake's comment was: + +"God and evil are here both good, and the two contraries married." + +Blake was early occupied with the marriage of contraries. Swedenborg's +word was a sanguine seed in prepared soil, and when it brought forth fruit +a hundredfold, the rich return was not the logical outcome of Swedenborg's +dualism, but a marriage of heaven and hell, of religion and art, which is +showing a fertile capacity for endless reproduction. + +So far, then, Swedenborg's attraction for Blake far exceeded his +repulsion, and he embraced him with impetuous affection. Here was a +teacher who could understand by experience both the new birth and vision. +By his help he disentangled himself from the particular explanation and +theory of the atonement as given by Whitefield and Wesley. Here was a +visionary who could not only understand his own visions, but who could +give a reasonable explanation of the working of the visionary faculty. +Swedenborg brought order, reason, and system into Blake's chaotic mind. +Isolated from the churches, yet ardently desiring fellowship as the +substance of his faith and wisdom, it appeared to him that there was +nothing else to do but join the New Church of Swedenborg, and accordingly, +in 1788, he and Catherine signed their names in token of membership and +assent to the distinctive doctrines of the New Church. The curious may +find this reported in the Minutes of the first Seven Sessions of the +General Conference of the New Church, published by James Speirs, 36 +Bloomsbury Street, 1885. + +Let us turn to Blake's two poems, _Tiriel_, 1788, and _Thel_, 1789, which +have special interest as they were written about this time that he +subscribed to the Swedenborgian Church and Swedenborg's influence was +paramount. + +Tiriel--old, bald, and blind--is related to Urizen, but Urizen in Blake's +completed mythology is the symbol not only of the law with its prohibitive +commandments, but of the reason formed by the five senses, and therefore +ever ready to stamp out imagination and inspiration, which derive their +source from beyond the senses. Tiriel is the product of the law, and is +the antithesis of love. Swedenborg's natural man was justified and saved +by love, Luther's faith not being sufficient, and so in Blake's Tiriel +there is besides St Paul's law the Lutheran's pharisaism, and just a +suggestion of that contempt for the beautiful which was to make Urizen +such a terrible figure, and was eventually to lead to Blake's estrangement +from Swedenborg. + +Tiriel at the hour of his death realized why his paradise was fallen, and +he had found nought but the drear sandy plain. His description of his own +upbringing, shocking as it is, is that of the great bulk of mankind. The +instant a child is born, the dull, blind father stands ready to form the +infant head; and if the child, like Blake, has vision, the father, like Mr +Blake, uses the whip to rouse the sluggish senses to act and to scourge +off all youthful fancies. + + "Then walks the weak infant in sorrow, compelled to number footsteps + Upon the sand. And when the drone has reached his crawling length, + Black berries appear that poison all round him. Such was Tiriel + Compelled to pray repugnant, and to humble the immortal spirit; + Till I am subtle as a serpent in a paradise, + Consuming all, both flowers and fruits, insects and warbling birds." + +Blake was thinking of his father and his own early whippings. But really +fathers are not absolutely necessary, for the mother, the nurse, the elder +sister, and the public school, can do the job a great deal more +effectually. The other poem, _The Book of Thel_, 1789, is Swedenborgian +throughout. Thel, youngest daughter of the Seraphim, bewails the +transitoriness of life and all beautiful things, herself included. Then +the _humble_ Lily of the Valley, a little Cloud, a Worm, and a Clod of +Clay, all in their respective ways preach to her that "Everything that +lives, lives not alone nor for itself." When she has reached the utter +selflessness of a Clod of Clay, then only will she be able to behold +steadfastly the seeming transitoriness of youth and beautiful things; +seeming, for like the lowly lily they melt to flourish in eternal vales. + +Here Blake endorses the Swedenborgian selflessness, and extols the +Swedenborgian lowliness, modesty, and humility. Swedenborg believed in no +doctrine of self-realization. To him the self was always an evil till lost +in the Lord. It was the remains in him of German mysticism. Blake slowly +and surely came to set a high value on the true self. But unlike the more +modern preacher of self-realization, he believed that a man found his real +self only after he had given himself passionately to Jesus the eternal +life and the eternal imagination. Then he was no longer to value the +humility and modesty attached to selflessness. Their place was to be taken +by a new kind of humility and a new kind of modesty of such flaming +quality, that he wished to drop the old names and find others that more +nearly described their sovereign reality. + +Thel is finally invited by the matron Clay to enter her house, with the +assurance that she may return. Immediately the terrific Porter of the +Eternal Gates lifted the _northern_ bar. + +This is a well-known gate, among Swedenborgians, into the unseen world. +But it is very terrible. According to Garth Wilkinson it was the only gate +that Blake knew, and he accounts by this means for Blake's apotheosis of +the self and the passions. At this time Blake saw through this gate what +Swedenborg saw; but later, when he had shaken him off and changed his +state, his vision changed accordingly, and the objects were stripped of +their horror. He was also to know all the four gates leading into the +unseen. + +Thel, entering, "wandered in the land of clouds through valleys dark, +list'ning dolours and lamentations" till she came even to her own +grave-plot. Through such a gate it matters not whether one views this +world or the other. Both must appear sad and joyless in the extreme, and +enmesh the beholder in blackest pessimism. Thel, hearing a voice wailing +like the ecclesiastic dirge of the disillusioned King, shrieked with +terror, and fled back unhindered into the vales of Har. + +_Thel_ is sweet, even heavenly in the Swedenborgian sense. But its +sweetness cloys. Christ, like the Law before Him, made a sparing use of +honey, preferring the more indispensable salt, which He enjoined His +disciples to have in themselves at all times. Blake was to recover +plentiful salt, but not until he had drawn Swedenborg's line between +heaven and hell in a wholly different place. + +Swedenborg's influence is pleasantly found at work in the _Songs of +Innocence_. Innocence was a favourite word, and Swedenborg saw the +celestial angels both innocent and naked. There is nothing more innocent +than a lamb, and therefore Blake by a sure instinct and in childlike joy +piped his song about the lamb, satisfying at once his feeling for the +lamb, the child, and the Maker of the lamb who was called the Lamb of God. + +The song called _The Divine Image_ shows Swedenborg's influence at its +best. So many men with Blake's mystic proclivities rush into vague +abstractions. To-day we hear of Infinite Love and Infinite Wisdom, +Infinite Life, and all personality denied to God. Yet these are mere +high-sounding abstractions, and are quite meaningless apart from concrete +personality. Swedenborg was clear as day here, and it was he who taught +Blake the pure wisdom contained in his verses: + + "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." + +Swedenborg's teaching continues in _The Songs of Experience_, but with a +question mark. + +Blake sings to the Fly: + + "Am not I + A fly like thee? + Or art not thou + A man like me?" + +To see humanity in a fly is Swedenborgian; and Blake answered his question +in the affirmative. + +In the next song there are many questions; and it cannot be doubted that +Blake's answers would have been the exact contrary to Swedenborg's. + +Swedenborg, like his theosophical predecessors, had a way of denying that +God created the particular animals that man finds inconvenient. Tigers, +wolves, rats, bats, and moths are so obnoxious, that it soothes man's +vanity to suppose that they are embodiments of evil exhaled from hell. +They have served as restful homes for vampires and other creations of Old +Night. And so Swedenborg, governed by mental habits of reason and use as +measured by man, drew a sharp line between animals of a heavenly and +hellish origin. When Blake saw the tiger he saw differently. His aesthetic +eye instantly marvelled at its "fearful symmetry," the fire of its eyes, +the sinews of its heart; and he cried, "Did He who made the Lamb make +thee?" He gives no answer. But there was no need. "In what distant _deeps_ +or _skies_" the tiger had his origin had no further perplexity for him +once he had married hell to heaven. + +_The Little Vagabond_, though hardly within the ken of Swedenborg, +contains what every vagabond knows. Blake was able to rescue vagabonds as +well as tigers from an exclusively hellish origin. + +Blake remained an orthodox Swedenborgian for nearly two years, and then +came reaction and rebellion, not without resentment and bitterness. What +was the cause of Blake's permanent repudiation of Swedenborg? Various +reasons are given by Swedenborgians to prove that Blake was wholly in the +wrong. Mr Morris gives a beautifully simple explanation. Quoting Blake's +saying that he had two different states, one in which he liked +Swedenborg's writings and one in which he disliked them, he says, "The +latter was a state of pride in himself, and then they were distasteful to +him, but afterwards he knew that he had not been wise and sane." That is +the way that we all at some time in our life account for the obstinacy of +those who will not worship at our altar. + +Mr Garth Wilkinson, who of Swedenborgians most deserves to be heard, wrote +in the preface of his edition of _The Songs of Innocence and Experience_, +1839, that Blake entered the "invisible world through the terrific porter +of its northern gate." Like Shelley, he verged towards pantheism, not a +spiritual pantheism, but a "natural spiritualism" or "ego-theism." His +genius "entered into and inhabited the Egyptian and Asiatic perversions of +an ancient and true religion," and thus "found a home in the ruins of +Ancient and consummated Churches." Wilkinson discovered a great deal of +the ego and of hell in Blake. All of this criticism, which is ingenious, I +cannot accept. To begin with the ego. Swedenborg believed that every man +in his own _proprium_ was consumed with self-love, and that only love to +the Lord could enable him entirely to overcome his love of self. Blake +believed that the real self was made in the image of God, and therefore it +must be loved, reverenced, and obeyed. The recognition of the same divine +principle in others enables one to love one's neighbour as oneself. All +German mystical talk of hatred to self and death to self was repudiated by +Blake as artificial and unreal. + +It is true that Blake came nearer to pantheism than Swedenborg did. He had +come, through his teacher, to regard the universe as an emanation from +God, and in working from this doctrine to its logical outcome in pantheism +he was more consistent than Swedenborg, who tried to evade the +consequences of his own theory. + +That Blake found a home in an ancient and consummated Church is true only +if Swedenborg's New Church is really the New Jerusalem predicted by St +John! For the rest, we hail with joy the element of "hell" in Blake. + +Blake himself makes some short incisive remarks on Swedenborg, which will +carry us a little farther to an understanding. "Swedenborg has not written +one new truth." "He has written all the old falsehoods." Blake had +ardently welcomed Swedenborg as a new teacher with a new message. In these +sentences he betrays disappointment, anger, and resentment. "Any man of +mechanical talents may, from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, +produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's, and from +those of Dante or Shakespeare an infinite number." If Blake had had a +wider culture, he would have known this when a boy, and blown off his +fumes at the proper season. We shall encounter again and again his lack of +grace when dealing with his successful contemporaries. + +We see, so far, that Blake reckoned that Swedenborg had failed him, and +that anything of value he found in him, he could find in the old masters. +But there was something he could find in them--a spirit of beauty and a +beauty of form--that was wholly lacking in Swedenborg, and an energy and +exuberance that appeared only in Swedenborg's hell. That this should be +the net result of Blake's expectations and Swedenborg's pretensions was +too much for Blake's patience; hence the violence of his reaction. + +Blake must have felt vaguely all along the lack of the aesthetic faculty in +Swedenborg. It was Swedenborg who helped him finally to understand the +exact value of his visions and thus to place him. + +We have seen that Swedenborg, by abstraction from space and time, arrived +at a doctrine of state which takes their place in heaven and hell. From +this it follows that man's vision is wholly dependent on his state, and +also that a man's visions cannot be trusted unless he has a perfect organ +of vision resting on a sound state. It is always fatuous for a religious +teacher to appeal to his visions to enforce his doctrines, since they +depend on the man himself, and we must form our judgment of him apart from +his visions. To appeal to a vision for the truth of a doctrine, and to the +doctrine for the truth of a vision, is merely to whirl oneself round in a +vicious circle; and therefore Swedenborg's whole make-up--will and +understanding--must be laid bare and measured by some standard with which +we may try the spirits and the prophets before we can begin to approach +his visions and gauge their value. + +Swedenborg's state was a state of reason, whether he viewed this world or +the other. His early scientific studies, unbalanced by any real +appreciation of art, moulded his mind into a rigid state which was +impervious to any outside stimulus. When he turned to religion, he made +the barren attempt to trim the mysteries of the Faith until they came +wholly within the grasp of the understanding. This is a rationalizing +process. Swedenborgians may object to hear their master called a +rationalist. It is true that that term is usually applied to those who +have no supersensual vision, and even deny its existence. Swedenborg is, +of course, sharply distinguished from all such, but he has with them the +same fundamental trust of reason, which in their case is used to gauge the +things of this world, in his the things of the other. Hence when he has +raised our expectations to a dizzy height, as he is about to report on +things seen and heard in heaven and hell, there is a ludicrous anticlimax +when we find that the angels are simply religious and talk theology +everlastingly, that heaven is like a well arranged Dutch tulip field, and +excepting one or two phases of hell the whole is just as exciting as a +problem in Euclid and as dull as a sanitary report. Hell alone stirred +some interest because its inmates had energy and blood. And therefore one +sympathizes with those spirits who, allowed to peep into heaven, +immediately chose to plunge themselves head-first into hell. + +Now Blake, being a visionary, knew that vision depended on will, and he +learnt further from Swedenborg that it depended also on state, and so, as +a man's state changed, his vision changed also. Blake's state was the +imagination of the poetic genius (Los), Swedenborg's the dry logical +faculty of the unassisted reason (Urizen), and as Blake looked at +Swedenborg's heaven and hell, he saw them approaching one to the other and +finally with an impetuous rush locked in a marital embrace. + +This is the most significant vision of modern times, after which it is +easy to judge Swedenborg. He had given for life, theology; for beauty, +ashes; and instead of emancipating the modern world he condemned it to the +appalling tedium of an everlasting Sunday School. The doctrine of the New +Jerusalem was not half so beautiful as that of the Old Jerusalem. Christ +come again in Glory was stripped of that beauty that men had perceived in +His first lowly coming. Blake's indictment of Swedenborg was severe. It +was also an indictment of the whole of protestant theology. The +magnificent fruit of Swedenborg's action and reaction, attraction and +repulsion for Blake was _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_. Blake was fresh +from reading Swedenborg's _Heaven and Hell_, and this and not the +ecclesiastical was continually in his thought as he wrote. At the same +time it is necessary to remember that Blake was not merely criticizing +Swedenborg. Swedenborg gave a rationalized version of the Lutheran +doctrine, and therefore to reject him involved a rejection of much of +Luther's teaching and of the protestantism that has flowed from him. + +Heaven, then, consists of the passive obeyers of reason, the religious, +the good; hell of the active obeyers of Energy, the irreligious, the evil. +Here let it be well marked and remembered that by the religious Blake +always meant those who repress their energies or passions until they +become passive enough for them to obey reason. + +Hell's prime quality is passion or energy or desire. This in itself is +neither good nor evil in the abstract sense in which these words are +generally understood, but considered absolutely it is good, for it is the +native energy of the man made in God's image and likeness. Energy works +according to the object of desire. If a man's object is the flesh, he +becomes an adulterer; if things of beauty and delight, an artist; if God, +a saint. Religious people, frightened and mistrustful of their desires, +restrain them until they are passive, and in doing so they are destroying +the motive power of their lives. They are wholly successful when they +become dead souls, and it is then, strictly speaking, that they are fit, +not for heaven, but for hell. The stronger the desire, the greater the +man. Once direct the energy by fixing its desire on God, it will drive the +man to greatness. Thus the typical restrainer or devil is the priest, the +typical man of passion or energy is the artist. Those who restrain their +energies in the name of Christ have identified Him with the reason, and +they have never caught so much as a glimpse of Him as He is. Swedenborg +and Milton worshipped a rational Christ, and therefore in Blake's eyes, as +also in the catholic's, they were heretics. The Book of Job and +Shakespeare see inspiration and imagination working with energy as the +highest good. The restrainer in the Book of Job is called Satan. Blake +alone in his time saw Christ as the supreme symbol of the +passionate-imaginative life. + +Those who have followed Blake thus far will at once understand the +Proverbs of Hell, and perceive in them the glorification of energy and all +things belonging to it. Excess, pride, lust and wrath are evidences of +great energy. Therefore "the road of _excess_ leads to the palace of +wisdom," "the _pride_ of the peacock is the glory of God," "the _lust_ of +the goat is the bounty of God" "the _wrath_ of the lion is the wisdom of +God." Generosity, prodigality, open-handedness, impulse, show a rich full +nature. Prudence, number, measure, weight, betray poverty and are fit "in +a year of death." The animals of abounding energy are the noblest, like +the lion, tiger, eagle. The animals lacking great energy take refuge in +cunning, like the fox and the crow. (Blake no longer questions who made +the tiger.) Blake extols fountains, not cisterns or standing water, +courage not cunning, exuberance not reason-broken passion. Even an +energetic "damn" braces, while a pious blessing induces a flabby +relaxation. + +Man's most valuable gift of God is passion. What a man makes of his life +will depend on how he regards his passion, and into what channels he +directs its course. + +Thus Blake unites contraries. But just as all is going merry as a marriage +bell, he suddenly declares that there are some contraries that can never +be married. The modern immanentist world is trying to unite good and evil, +beauty and ugliness, with baneful results. We are told that there is +nothing ugly to the discerning eye, and one wonders why one should take +pains to improve ones crude daubs. Blake says that religious people are +always trying to make these false matches. He gives as a typical example +the prolific and devourer--the active and passive. Each is necessary to +the other's existence. Union destroys both. It is easy to multiply +examples. Black and white produce grey, beautiful in art, but depressing +in life. Dark and light, twilight, beautiful, but sad and lowering. Cold +and heat, lukewarmness, which is hateful. Hard and soft, slush, which +abounds in modern thought. Hate and love, unctuousness or slime, which is +particularly obnoxious in some religious people. + +Blake hated these mashes. He had no faith in the love that could not hate. +Just as he seemed on the brink of sweeping away hell like an amiable +modern, he discovered that though he had made quick work of the +Swedenborgian and protestant hell, yet hell as Christ thought of it +remained and must remain. "Note.--Jesus Christ did not wish to unite, but +to separate them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats. And He says, 'I +come not to send Peace, but a Sword.'" Thus Blake kept his perception +clear and sharp. In following his own mental energy he was able to shake +off all pantheistic distortions of good and evil, and to see that though +with the majority these are mere abstractions, yet there is ultimately an +eternal distinction between them, and therefore heaven and earth may pass +away, but Jesus Christ's word concerning heaven and hell will abide for +ever. + +Christians have thought of heaven and hell too much as of future places. +Blake thought of them primarily as present states. Here a man's state is +obscured by its intermingling with conditions of space and time. Hereafter +the state creates the environment. The man in a state of hell, and +therefore in hell, is the one whose energy or vital fire is dead. The man +in a state of Heaven is the one who lives the more abundant life in which +his religion, art, and philosophy have become one. The real hell and the +real heaven can never be married, for any attempt to marry them results in +moral loss. But a man can pass from a state of hell into a state of +heaven, and the way to do it is the old way of repentance and +faith--repentance which changes heart and mind by giving them a new +object, and faith that takes and receives the glad tidings of the Kingdom +of God. + +Blake gave a curious illustration of his doctrine of state. A +Swedenborgian angel came to him, and condoled with him because of the +hot, burning dungeon that he was preparing for himself to all eternity. +The angel at his request undertook to show him his place in hell. Truly it +was horrible, and Blake describes the ideal Swedenborgian hell with a +power and vividness to which Swedenborg could never attain. The angel, not +enjoying the sight, decamped; but no sooner was Blake alone than the +horrible vision vanished, and he found himself "on a pleasant bank beside +a river, by moonlight, hearing a harper, who sung to the harp." The angel +had drawn him into his state, and he saw what the angel saw. When he +regained his real state, the vision was pleasant enough. Afterwards he +rejoined the angel and undertook to show him his lot. An angel is +necessarily above the modes of space and time. This one being religious, +and therefore repressed to passivity, was shown a timeless, spaceless +void, which was an eternal nightmare more unutterably fearful than +anything in Swedenborg's filthy sewer. + +Finally Blake overheard a marvellously rich and splendid bit of +conversation between a devil in a flame of fire and an angel seated on a +cloud. + +The devil pointed out how Jesus Christ was obedient to impulse, and how +His obedience to His passionate energies--to the Voice of God within +Him--made Him the Great Rebel and Law Breaker, mocking the sabbath and the +sabbath's God, guilty of the blood of His martyrs, exonerating the woman +taken in adultery, living on the labour and sweat of wage-slaves, +acquiescing in a false witness by His silence, coveting the best gifts for +His disciples. It was a Pharisee who said, "All these laws have I kept +from my youth," and he became a dead soul. Jesus on the cross looked back +on a pathway strewn with the corpses of the religious people He had killed +in His fiery impetuous course, and instead of a death-repentance, He +uttered the audacious word, "Father, into Thy Hands I commend My Spirit." + +The angel was converted. Embracing the flame of fire he was consumed, and +rose again as Elijah--the prophet of spirit and fire. + +And thus Blake took his leave of Swedenborg. He had expected too much of +him and was disappointed. It was more than enough to hear his name on the +lips of his pious, commonplace brother. He was indignant that he had not +fulfilled his high-sounding pretensions, and "the voice of honest +indignation," he wrote, "is the voice of God." But we who calmly look on +can detect the voice of resentment too, which robs his departure of grace. +But for Swedenborg _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ had never been +written. Swedenborg was the Goliath, strong in reason, logic, system, +science, intellect, slain by the stone from David's sling. Blake and not +Swedenborg was "the true Samson shorn by the Churches." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE REBELS + + +Blake was thirty-three when in 1790 he wrote _The Marriage of Heaven and +Hell_. + +It marked a crisis in his life. Hitherto, with all the generous exuberance +of youth, he was striving to leave the past behind, and reach forth to +something new that by sheer glory and beauty should sweep up in its course +the youth of the ages to come. + +For a time he believed that Swedenborg could supply him with the fire to +fashion and direct his own genius; but after poring long over his pages, +he began reluctantly to discover that the fire of his imagination had +either never been kindled or it was long since extinct. Whatever else +remained in Swedenborg--and there were undeniably many good things--was +impotent for the supreme task of supplying the creative spark. + +Blake was disappointed and disillusioned. Never again did he make an +impetuous rush to embrace any man, however dazzling his gifts. But not yet +had he learnt the vital value of the past. If no new prophet arrived, +there was still himself, and if he trusted himself with passionate faith, +he might yet accomplish the desired thing. + +In 1791 the outer events of his life ran a new course. Some time +previously, Fuseli had introduced him to a bookseller and publisher named +Johnson, living at 72 St Paul's Churchyard. + +This Johnson was a remarkable man. His sympathies were with rebels, whom +he detected, welcomed, and encouraged. But he had none of the hard +narrowness of advanced liberals, and his eye and heart were quick also to +discover and cheer such a shy, diffident, conservative genius as Cowper. +He was a friend to the authors whose works he published; and in a little +upper chamber he gave weekly dinner parties, to which were bidden William +Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Tom Paine, Dr Price and Dr Priestley, and now +Blake himself. In the 'eighties Blake had moved among elegant +Blue-stockings who were above all things anxious to show themselves true +daughters of Sarah: now in the 'nineties he was one of a party of rebels +who despised the past, and were hailing the French Revolution, believing +that after a few more of such upheavals a millennium would surely come in +which man would be perfected. + +Foremost among the rebels was William Godwin. Ten years younger, Blake +might have been captivated by Godwin, as later on Shelley, Coleridge, and +Bulwer Lytton were to be. There was always something clean and fresh about +Godwin, and his hopes and aspirations for mankind were generous. Brought +up in the narrowest sect of Calvinism, and believing while still a boy +that he was assuredly one of the elect, he rebounded in later life to a +liberal humanism, and retained little of his Calvinism except an unshaken +belief in his own election. The first edition of his _Enquiry concerning +Political Justice_ appeared in 1793, which he stated all his first +principles. These can be summarized briefly: + +The characters of men originate in their external circumstances, and +therefore man has no innate ideas or principles, and no instincts of right +action apart from reasoning. Heredity counts for almost nothing. It is +impression makes the man. The voluntary actions of men originate in their +opinions. + +Man is perfectible. + +Man has negative rights but no positive rights. + +Nothing further is requisite, but the improvement of his reasoning +faculty, to make him virtuous and happy. Freedom of will is a curse. It is +not free or independent of understanding, and therefore it follows +understanding, and fortunately is not free to resist it. Man becomes free +as he obeys it. It follows that our disapprobation of vice will be of the +same nature as our disapprobation of an infectious distemper. + +A scheme of self-love is incompatible with virtue. + +The only means by which truth enters is through the inlet of the senses. + +Intellect is the creature of sensation, we have no other inlet of +knowledge. + +Government is in all cases an evil, and it ought to be introduced as +sparingly as possible. + +Give a state but liberty enough, and it is impossible that vice should +exist in it. + +Thus Godwin was rationalist, altruist, anarchist, and non-resister. It is +not probable that Blake ever read _Political Justice_, his patience not +being equal to the task. While ardently desiring political justice and +liberty, it was soon plain to him from his personal knowledge of Godwin +that all his first principles were false. It was not true that man's +character originates in his external circumstances, although these do act +on him. The differences between men are traceable to a fundamental +inequality. One man turns everything he touches into dross, another into +gold. Why? Blake had no need to argue. Being a mystic, he knew that man's +innate principles, ideas, and instincts differed, that heredity could not +be ignored, that beyond the five inlets of the senses which reason alone +recognizes, there are a thousand inlets for the man whose spiritual +understanding is awakened. + +He shivered at the thought of what the world would become if the +rationalist had his way; for though he would sweep away superstitions, +injustices, cruelties, yet from his invariable lack of discrimination he +would crush with these the flowers and fruits of imagination, intuition, +and inspiration. Besides, whether State or no State, what sort of life +would man's be when his fundamental instincts and passions were allowed no +expression? Blake had not the statesman's power of looking at men in the +mass, but he knew that the individual was of extreme importance in any +community, and also that the individual's value lay in his power of +passion, and therefore Godwin's calm, reasoned, _doctrinaire_ scheme for +bringing the Millennium made no appeal to him whatever, and the two men +went their separate courses. + +It is interesting to note later that Shelley attained to liberty and song +just so far as he shook off Godwin. When he talked with exaggerated +nonsense about kings and priests, he was but repeating what he imbibed +from Godwin in his early undiscriminating youth. + +Mary Wollstonecraft was something quite new in the feminine way. Suffering +in youth all the torments of a repressed and restricted woman-child, and +possessing a full, passionate nature, she rebelled. Everywhere she turned +she saw woman set in an utterly false position, and, as a consequence, +silly, affected, degraded. Even those who made a bid for some solid +knowledge simpered, and too often, like Mrs Piozzi, repeated by rote, and +in Johnsonian periods, what they did not understand. Mary never doubted +for a moment that woman enfranchised economically would rise to great +things. Unerringly, she detected the true cause of woman's failure. "It is +vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent +of men." "Women must have a civil existence in the State." Poor Mary was +terribly alone, and had to work out her new faith in woman without any +human assistance. Fearlessly she exposed the delicate immorality of Dr +Gregory's _Legacy to his Daughters_, the "most sentimental rant" of Dr +George Fordyce, the oriental despotism of Rousseau; and not content with +such small game, she entered the lists against the arch-conservator Edmund +Burke, for which Walpole named her "a hyena in petticoats," and Burke +himself reckoned her with the viragoes and _poissardes_. Mary's wide +sympathies were not only for women. Her knowledge of children had +convinced her that they too had rights, and she had an irresistible faith +that with tyranny put down and political liberty won, the oppressed +peoples of the world would prove themselves capable of the highest things. +And therefore she flung herself into the cause of the French Revolution, +and made that her bone of contention with Burke. + +There is no finer contrast than Fanny Burney for bringing into relief the +special characteristics of Mary Wollstonecraft as a type of new woman. +Fanny welcomed with breathless interest the French emigrants as they +arrived one by one at Juniper Hall, and listened with horror as +Talleyrand, M. d'Arblay, M. de Narbonne recounted the atrocities of the +people. Mary took a room in Paris and watched their progress through her +window. Fanny was completely overcome at the news of Louis XVI's +martyrdom. Mary watched him go to his death, and would not allow a +momentary pity to make her forget the down-trodden poor. + +Fanny was a slave to conventions. Mary followed her own nature. Fanny +refused to correspond with Madame de Genlis, and asked Queen Charlotte +whether she had not done right, and at her father's bidding dropped Madame +de Stael, to whom she was attracted. Mary consulted no one about her +friendships, and in defiance of legal bonds was willing to be the mother +of Charles Imlay's child because she loved him. + +Alas! Charles Imlay was faithless; and when Mary returned to England with +little Fanny Imlay, alone and broken in spirit, it was bookseller Johnson +who befriended her as he had our lonely Blake. Obviously there was much in +common between her and Blake. He was with her in her hope for women, and +children, and the poor. She had found herself in spite of mistakes, and +her character and her works were informed with vital passion. Had Blake +been single, and she drawn into friendship with him, she would have become +the perfect type of new woman, imaginative, understanding, impassioned, +inspired; as it happened, it was into Godwin's arms she fell, and not +Blake's, and while Godwin took her in like a wandering dove, and gave her +shelter and sympathy, yet the slight chill of his marital deportment and +reasoned ways would have hindered her, had she lived, from bringing her +fine character to full fruition. + +Tom Paine presents another type of rebel with whom Blake came into +contact. He had already made for himself fast friends and bitter enemies +by aiding and abetting the American Rebellion. The thirteen colonies, +though irritated by the Stamp Act, were not at once inclined to rebel, and +even after Charles Townshend's proposal of tea-duty, South Carolina, +Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware still held back. Paine could wield a +powerful pen, and by this means he kept the flame of discontent alive, and +urged the States on till Jefferson composed a Declaration of Independence +to which the four backward States were brought reluctantly to agree, and +on July 4th, 1776, the American United Colonies declared themselves Free +and Independent States. + +After this success Paine felt that his pen was equal to any task. Having +returned to England and fallen in with the Godwin set, he of course shared +with them in their sympathies for the French Revolution, and in addition +declared himself a deist, and set himself, in his _Age of Reason_, to +discredit the Bible. It was all very well when he was doing the rough work +of fanning rebellion, but he was ludicrously unfit for the fine work of +criticizing the Bible. Its poetry and mysticism and manifold wisdom were +not even suspected by him. He stolidly read through the sublime chapters +of Isaiah, and thought them worse than the production of a schoolboy; and +when he came to the stories of the Nativity, which, whether fact or +poetry, are marvellously beautiful, he became so grossly indecent that one +is bound to relegate him to the vulgarest order of Bible-smashers. + +His deism was a symptom of the times. Dr Priestley, who also attended +Johnson's dinners, was a polished ornament of the sect. They persuaded +themselves that God, having set the universe agog, remained Himself wholly +outside of it. It was well that Blake should come into personal touch with +these rebel deists. They could never appeal to him even for a moment, for +he was penetrated all his life with the belief that God dwelt inside of +His creation; and since all theological rebellion tended more and more in +the direction of a mechanical deism, he began to suspect that he must +look elsewhere to discover the wisdom that should crown his years. + +Yet there was something in Paine that appealed to Blake. They were both +worshippers of liberty, and while they could not meet on theological +ground, they were stirred alike by the portentous and successive crises on +the other side of the Channel. Paine felt that he still had work to do. He +had served his apprenticeship in America, he would now put forth his whole +strength in his _Rights of Man_, and help forward the sacred cause of +Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. + +There were other rebels--Holcroft, playwright and translator, friend of +Godwin, afterwards to be sent to Newgate; Hardy and Thelwall; Horne Tooke, +who raised subscriptions for the relief of Americans and spoke of the +transactions at Lexington and Concord as "inhuman murders." He was to be +tried along with Holcroft and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. + +Now Blake sympathized with all these rebels in their political +aspirations; but whereas their watchword was reason, and their revolt was +in the name of reason, he believed that reason carried one very little +way, and that the elemental deeps of life and passion that lie far under +reason must be stirred and aroused if the work of rebellion was to bring +forth lasting fruit. In any case, the reason-bound men had little to teach +him. He had looked to Swedenborg, he had taken knowledge of his advanced +contemporaries. Godwin rebelled for political liberty, Mary Wollstonecraft +for liberty of women and children, Tom Paine for liberty of man. What was +left for Blake? The sex question had never been dragged out into the +light. The subject was unclean. Sexual morality consisted in repression. +Nowhere as here does repression breed such poisonous fruits. Was not sex +a part of that vital fire and passion in which Blake believed with his +whole heart? Was it not true that whatsoever lives is holy? Must not there +be liberty for the sexual instinct if it was to be kept clean? For the +next ten years Blake became the advocate of bodily liberty, +indistinguishable from free-love. This was to be the recurring theme again +and again in his prophetic books. This was to be his contribution towards +the new kind of man or superman for whom he was groping. Afterwards, when +he had given substance and form in his prophecies to the vague and +indefinite thoughts that lay in him, he was to learn how to estimate and +place them. Not until he had walked the road of mental excess was he to +arrive at the palace of wisdom. Once there, he was to revise even his +ideas on rebellion. + +Keeping these persons and things steadily in view, let us now follow in +order and detail the works of Blake's most rebellious period. + +As was fitting, Blake sounded the note of rebellion in a poem on the +French Revolution. + +At this stage--1790-91--the Revolution had not advanced far. The Reign of +Terror and the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were still in +the future. But the Bastille had fallen, and the noise of its fall set the +nerves of the overstrung English liberals vibrating. The battle in prose +was waged by Paine, Mackintosh, and Mary Wollstonecraft against Burke, and +their names came at once into notoriety. Blake was as outspoken, and even +more fearless, for he wore publicly the _bonnet rouge_ as the outward and +visible sign of his faith, but fortunately for him, his natural medium of +expression was poetry, and that of a kind hitherto unknown, and so, say +what he would, no one paid him the smallest attention. What came +doubtlessly as a surprise to himself was that his poem found a publisher; +and the first Book, with the promise that the remaining Books of the Poem, +which were finished, should be published in their order, was announced to +the world by bookseller Johnson in 1791, at the modest price of one +shilling. + +Blake has a strange allegorical method of dealing with the Revolution +which can only irritate those who are not accustomed to his ways. Thus he +speaks of the seven dark and sickly towers of the Bastille. To these he +gives the descriptive names of Horror, Darkness, Bloody, Religion, Order, +Destiny, the Tower of God, and he gives descriptions of the prisoners in +the towers corresponding to their names. All these were imprisoned because +in some form or other they had bidden for liberty. One was the author of +"a writing prophetic"; another, a woman, "refused to be whore to the +Minister and with a knife smote him"; another had raised a pulpit in the +city of Paris and "taught wonders to darkened souls." The horror of their +condition is described with great power, although with too congested an +accumulation of baneful images. Thus: "In the tower named Darkness was a +man pinioned down to the stone floor, his strong bones scarce covered with +sinews; _the iron rings were forged smaller as the flesh decayed_." That +is a Dantesque touch. But when one reads farther down of "an old man, +whose white beard covered the stone floor like weeds on margin of the sea, +shrivelled up by heat of day and cold of night; his den was short and +narrow as a grave dug for a child, with spiders' webs wove and with slime +of ancient horrors covered, for snakes and scorpions are his companions," +then the piled-up details prevent a clear image, and detract from the +value of what has gone before. In contrast to the wretched inhabitants of +the Bastille, we are presented with the King and his nobles. Here are +names, but no portraits. The King stands for the spirit of kingship in all +ages and his nobles are those who uphold "this marble-built heaven," and +"all this great starry harvest of six thousand years." They must resist to +the death the crooked sickle stretched out over fertile France "till our +purple and crimson is faded to russet, and the Kingdoms of earth bound in +sheaves, and the ancient forests of chivalry hewn, and the joys of the +combat burnt for fuel." (As Blake penned these fine words something of his +early Elizabethan passion must have stirred in him.) The King, through +whom the spirits of ancient Kings speak, peers through the darkness and +clouds, and involuntarily sees the truth: "We are not numbered among the +living." Life is with the prisoners who have burst their dens. Let Kings +"shivering over their bleached bones hide in the dust! and plague and +wrath and tempest shall cease." + +The Archbishop of Paris, symbol of traditional religion, arises and +addresses the King. For him revolution can only mean atheism. "God so long +worshipped departs as a lamp without oil.... The sound of prayer fails +from lips of flesh, and the holy hymn from thickened tongues." + +Clergy as well as nobles vanish, mitre as well as crown. "The sound of the +bell, and voice of the sabbath, and singing of the holy choir is turned +into songs of the harlot in day, and cries of the virgin in night. They +shall drop at the plough and faint at the harrow, unredeemed, unconfessed, +unpardoned; the priest rot in his surplice by the lawless lover, the holy +beside the accursed, the King, frowning in purple, beside the grey +ploughman, and their worms embrace together." + +This, fine as it is, calls out a still finer speech from Orleans. "Can +nobles be bound when the people are free, or God weep when His children +are happy?" Then to the Archbishop he cries: "Go, thou cold recluse, into +the fires of another's high flaming rich bosom, and return unconsumed, and +write laws. If thou canst not do this, doubt thy theories, learn to +consider all men as thy equals, thy brethren, and not as thy foot or thy +hand, unless thou first fearest to hurt them." + +Finally the voice of the people is heard rising from valley and hill. What +though "the husbandman weeps at blights of the fife, and blastings of +trumpets consume the souls of mild France, and the pale mother nourishes +her child to deadly slaughter, yet when the will of the people is +accomplished, then shall the soldier throw down his sword and musket and +run and embrace the meek peasant ... the saw and the hammer, the chisel, +the pencil, the pen, and the instruments of heavenly song sound in the +wilds once forbidden ... and the happy earth sing in its course, the mild +peaceable nations be opened to heaven, and men walk with their fathers in +bliss." + +This and much more is what the capture of the Bastille symbolized for +Blake. We see that his hopes ran high. The Revolution was to rectify no +temporary disorder. It was to set the people free for the first time in +the world's history, and so effect a Kingdom of God on earth which had +been the passionate yearning of imprisoned souls in all ages. The Kingdom +was to come by passion and not intellect, by fire and not snow. And so to +cold _doctrinaire_ Godwin and such-like, he would have said as Orleans to +the Archbishop in the poem: "Go, thou cold recluse, into the fires of +another's high flaming rich bosom." Godwin was to go, as we know, into +Mary's flaming rich bosom, and to warm as he chilled her; but even Mary +could not bring him to the flaming point which burned in the bosom of +William Blake as it had in the bosom of Jesus Christ. + +Blake's obscurity protected him from the persecution that was pursuing its +victims in the Johnson circle. + +On July 14th, 1790, Dr Priestley had arranged a dinner party in Birmingham +to commemorate the capture of the Bastille, for which he was mobbed, and +his house, containing a fine library, philosophical instruments, and +laborious manuscripts, was destroyed. In 1792 Tom Paine was marked out by +the Home Office as another victim; but while he was reporting at Johnson's +his public speech of the preceding evening, Blake advised him to decamp at +once to France or he was a dead man; and he, taking the hint, escaped +safely to Calais, and was ready to take his part in the National +Convention, to which the Department of Calais had appointed him. Paine +never returned to England, but he was to encounter many perils during the +Reign of Terror, and to write the _Age of Reason_, in which he attacked at +once the Bible and French atheism. + +Blake, still fired by liberty, wrote his _Song of Liberty_ according to Dr +Sampson about 1792. + +Liberty was the new-born terror, fire, and wonder, brought forth by the +eternal Female. Under its inspiration England was to be healed, America +renewed, Spain to burst the barriers of old Rome, and Rome herself to cast +her keys deep down into eternity. But liberty has a dire conflict with +Urizen, here called the jealous King and the gloomy King, who with his +grey-browed counsellors, thunderous warriors, curled veterans, and ten +commands, makes a fight for life. Liberty stamps the stony law to dust +till Empire is no more, and is confident that the lion and wolf shall +cease. The sons of liberty are sons of joy, and counting that everything +that lives is holy, proceed to act whenever they will. + +Thus Blake stumbles again on the vexed subject of sex, and it was to +remain something of an obsession with him for many years. + +His main thoughts can be gathered from _The Visions of the Daughters of +Albion_, which he engraved and printed in 1793. The heroine Oothoon, a +Blakean Tess, loves and is beloved by Theotormon. But Bromion, forcibly +conveying her to his stormy bed, tears her virgin mantle in twain. +Satiated, he cries to Theotormon: "Now thou mayst marry Bromion's harlot, +and protect the child of Bromion's rage, that Oothoon shall put forth in +nine moons' time." + +Theotormon refused. Consumed with jealousy, and reckoning Oothoon a +defiled thing, he cannot receive her, and the two, loving, remain apart, +consuming their days in misery and tears. + +Oothoon calls on Theotormon's eagles to rend away her defiled bosom, that +she may reflect the image of Theotormon on her pure transparent breast. +The eagles rend their bleeding prey, at which Theotormon, considering that +Oothoon suffers what she deserves, severely smiles. She, with no touch of +resentment at his self-righteous cruelty, which in truth she is too +self-effacing to perceive, reflects the smile, "and as the clear spring, +muddied with feet of beasts, grows pure and smiles." It is plain that, +whatever her past acts, she is a pure living soul, and Theotormon with his +conventional morality is neither clean nor alive. She is "a new-washed +lamb tinged with the village smoke," or "a bright swan by the red earth of +our immortal river," but she has only to bathe her wings, and she is white +and pure to hover round Theotormon's breast. + +With the cleansing of her breast comes the clearing of her vision. She is +no longer enclosed by her five senses, nor her infinite brain into a +narrow circle, but she sees through nature, and comes to see Theotormon as +he really is. He was only a selfish devourer. But she cries: + + "Can that be Love, that drinks another as a sponge drinks water, + That clouds with jealousy his nights, with weepings all the day, + To spin a web of age around him, grey and hoary and dark; + Till his eyes sicken at the fruit that hangs before his sight?" + +Then she names it aright: + + "Such is _self-love_ that envies all, a creeping skeleton, + With lamplike eyes watching around the frozen marriage bed!" + +Her own love has risen far above such selfishness. She will even lie by +his side on a bank, and view him without jealousy as he takes his delight +with "girls of mild silver, or of furious gold," and into the heaven of +generous love she will bring no selfish blightings. Then with these lovely +words she concludes her golden speech: + + "Arise, you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy! + Arise, and drink your bliss, for everything that lives is holy." + +Here we get in poetry, as later in the _Epipsychidion_ of Shelley, a +beautiful conception of love and sexual morality. It is what all with any +touch of poetical feeling have at times felt since the days of Shelley, +and it has appeared in many modern novels and plays. But we must keep in +mind that man's deepest feelings and thoughts are revealed by his acts and +not his words, however beautiful they may be. Blake was to push his +mental liberty to its utmost extent, and advocate a freedom that should +satisfy the exorbitant demands of the most modern eroto-maniac; but the +fact remains that in his own life he fulfilled to the letter the +requirements of traditional morality, not because his wandering fancy was +inactive, but because, things being as they are, it is not always possible +to translate poetry into act, and the old morality is the only thing that +reckons with the disabilities of this tiresome old world. + +In this same year Blake wrote and engraved _America, A Prophecy_. + +We have already seen his interest in the French Revolution, and his +excited hope that it would lead to the regeneration of Europe and the +world. He now works backwards to the American War of Independence, and +considers that the Demon's (Orc's) light that France received had first +been kindled when the thirteen States of North America struck for liberty. + +He expected much from America. Believing at this period that rebellion was +the direct road to liberty and wisdom, his expectation of America was +great because, being farther removed from tradition, her position +predisposed her to rebel. + +England's boast of colonies was to him a vain boast, and her watchword +"Empire" had no magic for him. While the thirteen States of North America +were possessions of England, and were ruled by thirteen governors of +England's choosing, he believed that America must remain enslaved and +unfruitful, and therefore Earth must lose another portion of the Infinite. +To lose a portion, however small, of the Infinite is unutterable loss, and +so Blake's fiery impetuous sympathies burned towards those +men--Washington, Franklin, Paine, Warren--who had stirred the States to +insurrection and revolt. His imagination leapt to an ensuing liberty in +which social evils should be left far behind. + + "Let the enchained soul, shut up in darkness and in sighing, + Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years, + Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open; + And let his wife and children return from the oppressor's scourge. + They look behind at every step, and believe it is a dream, + Singing: 'The sun has left his blackness, and has found a fresher + morning, + And the fair moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night; + For Empire is no more, and now the Lion and Wolf shall cease.'" + +Then all the things that religion has repressed spring up and flourish. +The pristine fiery joy, once perverted to ten commands, burns through all +obstructions, and, as a flame of life, leaps to life, rejoicing in all +living things, even in the harlot who remains undefiled, "though ravished +in her cradle night and morn." And man walks amidst the lustful fires +unconsumed. The fires serve to make his feet "become like brass, his knees +and thighs like silver, and his breast and head like gold." + +Blake exulted in his vision and proclaimed it in unfaltering tones because +he knew that "the soul of sweet delight can never be defiled." Here he +adds a touch or two to his vision of sex in _The Vision of the Daughters +of Albion_, and he reaches its heart. The _soul_ of sweet delight is +eternally clean. Once a man has grasped this truth, and it may cost him +much mental fight to reach it, then he is able to think and speak cleanly +of the passion of love, he can go naked, like Adam in Eden, and the angels +of the highest heaven, and know no touch of shame. + +There is much in modern literature and art that Blake would have detested, +but he would have loved the soul of Sonia the undefiled harlot that +Dostoieffski has revealed with such wonderful power in his _Crime and +Punishment_. + +Blake followed the American conflict until "the British soldiers through +the Thirteen States sent up a howl of anguish" and threw their swords and +muskets to the earth. They were unable to stand before the flames of Orc; +and since those flames had now reached to France, Blake dreamed that +nothing could withstand their hungry course till the regeneration of the +world should come. + +All this and much more is said in Blake's symbolical way. Here, as in _The +French Revolution_, there are no portraits. The rebels of the States, and +even Paine, are mere names, and much less real than the angels of the +States who carry on the real business. These angels lived in an ancient +palace built on the Atlantean hills between America and England. It is +interesting to note these things, because the angels of the States are +suggested by the angels of the Kingdoms in the apocalyptic book of Daniel, +which Blake loved and instinctively understood, and the Atlanteans have +always had an irresistible attraction for men of a theosophical turn of +mind. Blake was a close student of the apocalyptic books of the Bible all +his life; his knowledge of the Atlanteans probably came to him through his +Rosicrucian readings. + +_America_ lets us see the profound admiration Blake felt towards Paine for +his action in the American War. Later on we shall find him criticizing +with some asperity the deism that his friend confessed. + +I must pass over Blake's other writings of this year, and merely recount +that he again changed his residence, and went to live in Lambeth at 13 +Hercules Buildings. Dr Samson says that it is now numbered 23, but +authorities cannot agree whether it was this house or the next. + +In 1794 Blake engraved his _Europe: A Prophecy_, which is the last of his +poems dealing with contemporaneous political events. + +Europe stood for Blake in his rebellious mood as the symbol of tradition, +authority, science, religion. It was the dead past. "Enitharmon slept +eighteen hundred years. Man was a dream, the night of Nature and their +harps unstrung." Europe, during this long sleep, was without vision, +inspiration, art, and true nature. Her religion, divorced from art, was +repressive, and existed by trading on men's fears. Falling under the +tyranny of the five senses, she believed only so much as the senses could +testify of; hence she was rational, utilitarian, unimaginative, and +joyless. She squinted so abominably with such eyes as she had that she saw +nothing as it was. God, man, nature, became creations of man's perverted +reason, and God was used as an efficient policeman to keep insurrectionary +nations in subjection and vital men in order. + +But Blake believed that he had already seen the morning star that heralded +the full blaze of the Sun. Already the invisible powers who control +nations and men were stirring and preparing for their last fearful +conflict, which should result in new heavens and a new earth. The angels +were at war. Urizen and his many sons were tightening their sinews for the +last life-and-death grip; against them was Orc, the horrent demon, +"already a kindled and quenchless fire, Los, the spirit of inspiration far +more nearly allied with fiery passion (Orc) than with cold intellectual +reason (Urizen), Los' wife Enitharmon and their many sons and daughters, +Rintrah, Palamabron, Elynittria and Ocalythron. These Ossianic and +Miltonic principalities and powers were waging huge and terrific war in +the heavenly places, and already on earth was kindled in France the +earthly counterpart and shadow of the invisible horrible conflict. + +The work of regeneration, once begun, could not be arrested. Passion, +fire, energy, all the irresistible things pent up in hell, were let loose; +and they would involve Europe and the world in an ocean of blood. The +whole cosmos, inward in the heavens, outward in the sun, moon, stars, and +earth, was dyed in crimson, until the tribulation such as was not since +the world began should work up to the grinding pains of labour, and in +infinite pain there should come to the birth the new age of which the +prophets and poets had dreamed in all ages. + + "The Sun glow'd fiery red! + The furious Terrors flew around + On golden chariots, raging with red wheels, dropping with blood! + The Lions lash their wrathful tails! + The Tigers couch upon the prey and suck the ruddy tide; + And Enitharmon groans and cries in anguish and dismay. + + Then Los arose: his head he reared, in snaky thunders clad; + And with a cry that shook all Nature to the utmost pole, + Called all his sons to the strife of blood." + +Blake was very sanguine. He had endured the rude shock of the Reign of +Terror, and though he had thrown aside the red cap, he was determined to +see in these horrors nothing but the grim accompaniments of every +regenerating process. Enitharmon, once awake after her long sleep, would +call together the sweet ministers of melodious songs. Ethinthus, Queen of +Waters, Manatha-Varcyon on her golden wings, Leutha, soft soul of +flowers, Antamon, Prince of the Pearly Dew, "all were forth at sport +beneath the solemn moon, waking the stars of Urizen with their immortal +songs; that Nature felt thro' all her pores the enormous revelry, till +Morning opened the eastern gates." + + +[Illustration: THE ANCIENT OF DAYS. + +_Frontispiece to Europe._] + + +_Europe_ has for frontispiece one of Blake's most famous designs--_The +Ancient of Days_. The vision was seen against the dark gloom of the upper +story of his Lambeth house. Its real ground lay in the Book of Proverbs. +Wisdom says: "When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a +compass upon the face of the depth ... then I was by Him, as one brought +up with Him."[3] + +The author of the Proverbs looks back to the first creation, which God saw +to be very good. Blake looks forward to the new. What if all around are +dark clouds? Yet the Ancient of Days is in an orb of light, and He is +stooping down and measuring the deep with His compasses. Nothing can stay +His hand. The upheaval of Europe, involving the world, is the prelude to +the new creation when the Almighty's vision for His universe shall be +fulfilled. + +_Europe_ touches the limit of Blake's rebellion. During the next thirty +years history was to comment on the French Revolution in a way that was +not his in his impetuous prophetic books. He was to learn that rebellion +is a road to wisdom because it is a species of excess. Excess teaches a +man to know what is enough, and when Blake knew the exact value of +rebellion he was prepared to read the Past afresh, and find that its +treasury contained priceless jewels that he never even suspected, while he +was passionately searching for some new thing. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +ACTION AND REACTION + + +In _Europe_ Blake reached the boundary of his rebellious mood. The impetus +of his rebellion might by its own strength have carried him further down +the stream; but the Reign of Terror was a rude check, and among other +things it enabled him to climb on to the bank and view the course of +events with some degree of detachment. + +He found that he could no longer refuse to listen to another voice that +had been sounding more or less loudly for some years--the voice of his own +experience, and, that which inevitably follows, the voice of the +experience of mankind. His thought flew backwards and forwards, backwards +to Eden and innocent Adam, followed by the wilderness and the curse, +forwards to some more years of travail, and then the crimson dawn glowing +on the gathered fruits of experience. + +Would experience eventually restore the innocence that was lost with Eden? +Were they even things of the same kind? No; Blake was sure that they were +contraries, contrary as Swedenborg's heaven and hell, contrary states of +the human soul. But many contraries can be married. Innocence married to +experience must vanish as innocence, but rise again in a new form in the +more fruitful married relation. It appears that with most men innocence +lost never returns. Blake never lost his. It is seen in all its infantine +simplicity in _The Songs of Innocence_, and it could show itself at any +time during his long life. But this divine element is sadly rare even in +the poets, and it is its irresistible presence in Blake that makes him +wellnigh unique. In ourselves we find from experience knowledge of good +and evil, complicated views on philosophy and theology, puzzled brains, +and a frightfully murky atmosphere, and it seems Utopian to imagine that +it will ever be otherwise. + +Blake maintained, and so had the Saints, that when experience had effected +its work and disposed of its dirt, smoke, and mud, a glorious something +would emerge which innocence could never know, but which will include the +innocence that we see in lambs and babies and buttercups and saints. +Between what we are and what we shall be is a sandy desert; and, since +Eden is lost, all, even the Christ, have to pass through the desert to +gain the promised land. The words of Christ are not the words of one who +has lived only in Eden. They are crystalline clear, flaming, simple, deep, +and infinitely wise, we should almost say innocent, but as to "create a +flower is the labour of ages," so when we look behind the words of Christ, +and seize their implications, we discover not only the sorrow and joy, +labour and triumph of His own experience, but that of the past labouring +ages; and until we know something of present living experience added to +that of the past, we shall never have an inkling of even the simplest +words that lie on the face of the gospel. + +It was fitting that in 1794, when Blake uttered his prophecy of things to +come in _Europe_, he should also gather together his _Songs of +Experience_, and engrave them for the joy of posterity. + +_The Little Girl Lost_ and _The Little Girl Found_ bring together better +than any perhaps the two contrary states of innocence and experience. + +Lyca, being innocent and only seven summers old, wandered, allured by the +wild birds' song. She is lost but not dismayed. Falling asleep, the beasts +of prey come around her and minister to her, and finally convey her +tenderly to a cave. + +Then her parents, experienced but not innocent, arise and seek her. They +pass through all the sufferings, sorrows, sighings, of this waste howling +wilderness, buying the experience that almost kills them, till in terror +they find Lyca among the wild beasts. But beholding Lyca they learn her +secret, and + + "To this day they dwell + In a lonely dell: + Nor fear the wolfish howl + Nor the lion's growl." + +_The Clod and the Pebble_ give the two contrary states of love. The clod +proclaims the love that forgets itself in ministering to others; the +pebble the love that would bind and devour all others, making them +contribute to its own delight. + +_A Poison Tree_ shows how repressed things secrete poison. + + "I was angry with my friend: + I told my wrath, my wrath did end. + I was angry with my foe: + I told it not, my wrath did grow." + +The repressed anger ended in murder. Blake was sure that any passion +repressed was equally fatal. + +_The Schoolboy_ gives the miserable experience that is thrust upon us all +through the blind cruelty of those who would educate us. This experience +is so contrary that nothing could be more calculated to crush native +innocence, joy, and spring. + + "O! father and mother, if buds are nipped + And blossoms blown away, + And if the tender plants are stripped + Of their joy in the springing day, + By sorrow and care's dismay, + How shall the summer arise in joy, + Or the summer fruits appear? + Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, + Or bless the mellowing year, + When the blasts of winter appear?" + +How indeed? The question is to parents, schoolmasters, professors, +priests. The conditions for young lives are created by those who would +strangle life. Yet when experience has been its most contrary, even +nailing its victim to a cross, just there is deliverance. + + "Whate'er is born of mortal birth + Must be consumed with the earth, + To rise from generation free." + +It was Blake's supreme experience that he had been set free from +generation. It was by a re-generation, and that had come to him through +the death of Jesus. + + "The death of Jesus set me free." + +The same year 1794 saw Blake spinning fast the special mythological web +with which he was to clothe or strangle his vision. He had separated from +all his spiritual teachers; but Swedenborg lived on in him much more than +he owned or even recognized, and Ossian and Milton still governed his +imagination. Milton's huge figures were imitated in the mythological +figures which were to stalk about his universe to the end; Ossian's +fantastic names, which always fascinated him, provoked others still more +fantastic. By means of these uncouth daemons he determined to set forth his +own particular view of the cosmos, which, starting with eternity, was to +fall into creation, and finally, after lightning, thunder, rolling clouds, +and a sea of blood, accompanied by roarings, shrieks, and howlings, was to +attain to salvation by a return to the divine order. + +The "return" is treated of with great fullness in the _Jerusalem_: the +"fall" is hardly more than sketched in the fragmentary Books of _Urizen_, +_Los_, and _Ahania_. But as the process of return is the exact reverse to +that of the fall, an understanding of the one enables one to fill in the +gaps of the other. If there were other books dealing with the fall more in +detail, I for one can contemplate the loss with equanimity. + +_The Book of Urizen_ is supposed to be the account of the creation, and +those who endorse this view proceed to identify Urizen with the Jehovah of +the Old Testament, which is as false as to identify him with the Jesus of +the New, although it is only too true that scores of Christians worship +Urizen under the names of Jehovah and Jesus. + +In strict truth, Blake gives no account of the creation at all. To create +can only mean that which the Catholic Church affirms that it does mean, to +make something out of nothing. To reject this leaves two +alternatives--either that God made the universe out of something outside +of Himself, which is dualism, or out of something inside of Himself, which +is pantheism. Blake, like Swedenborg, adopted the last, but whereas +Swedenborg tried to evade the pantheistic conclusion by his doctrine of +discrete degrees, Blake swam in the pantheistic sea, and was saved from +drowning by clinging to the rocks which he discerned standing out in +bold outline, and a perception of the ultimate irreconcilable antinomy of +good and evil, of sheep and goats, which is a direct contradiction of +pantheism, and fits in only with the catholic doctrine. There are other +such contradictions in Blake, which did not in the least trouble him. With +his passion for contraries he harboured them all, marrying them when he +could, and just leaving them when they absolutely refused to unite. He had +not the requisite talent for building a coherent system. + + +[Illustration: URIZEN IN CHAINS. + +_From The First Book of Urizen._] + + +What is called, then, Blake's account of the creation is really his +account of the fall of the universe out of eternity into time and space, +and the consequent appearance of man in his contracted and sense-bound +condition. Urizen is the agent in the fall; but he must not be identified +with Satan any more than with Jehovah. He, as nearly as possible, +represents reason. When he stands in the eternal order working on those +things supplied him by Los (imagination), he is a fountain of light, +intellect, and joy; when he is rent from Los' side, he becomes +self-closed, all repelling, shut up in an abominable void and +soul-shuddering vacuum, and his intellect becomes dark and cold because +his reason has nothing to work upon except what is supplied by the narrow +inlet of the senses. + +Thus shut in the deep, he broods until his thoughts take outward shape and +form, and there arises "a wide World of solid obstruction." He then +proceeds to write his books of wisdom. But his vision being quenched, he +is confined to that which his still all-flexible senses provide. He knows +much about the terrible monsters that inhabit the bosoms of all--the seven +deadly sins of the soul. From his prolonged fightings and conflicts with +them there is distilled a kind of wisdom, which he gathers into his books; +but it is joyless wisdom, negative rather than positive, restrictive, +retributive, censorious, jealous, cruel, penal, and is best solidified in +the decalogue with its reiterated "Thou shalt not." + +Eternity, which is present and within, rolled wide apart, "leaving ruinous +fragments of life." Rent from eternity, Urizen becomes a clod of clay, and +Los, beholding him, becomes like him, and is compelled to continue the +work of creation in constricted forms. With his hammer he forges links of +hours, days, and years. Man with his head, spine, heart, appears; then are +formed his eyes, ears, nostrils, throat, tongue, feet--little members that +hide from him eternity, and cause him to see the things that are within as +though they were without, like the stars of night seen through a great +telescope. + +After the man the woman appears, whom the Eternal myriads named Pity. She +is an emanation from Los, and is named by Blake Enitharmon. Los embraces +her, and she begets a child in her own image--a Human Shadow, who is named +Orc (passion). + +Thus grows up a world of men, women, children, with their various hungers +and needs. The Eternals try to provide for these needs by science and +religion; but as they can build their science and religion only from their +experience and observation of the contracted universe, the science is +sand, and religion a web, and earth's wretched children remain under the +cruel rule and curse of Urizen and his sons, calling his laws of Prudence +the Eternal Laws of God. + +_The Song of Los_ (engraved 1795) adds many interesting particulars of the +process by which the world, with its philosophies and religions, has +become what it is. + +Los, the Eternal Prophet, is the father of all systems of thought, but it +does not follow that all are equally true. For Los is out of the divine +order, and therefore the systems inspired by him and his many sons, while +containing streaks of the eternal truths, are all out of focus. + + +[Illustration: LOS. + +_From The First Book of Urizen._] + + +Thus Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brahma in the East, and it is +defective because it is abstract. The same applies to all modern +theosophical revivals of Hindoo religion. An abstraction for Blake was a +falling away from concrete reality, and he found his deliverance in the +Christian doctrine of God. + +Palamabron, another son of Los, gave abstract Law to Trismegistus, +Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Abstract Law is also negative, and +therefore Orc (passion) finds himself chained down with the chain of +Jealousy, and howls in impotent rage. + +Sotho teaches Odin a Code of War which at any time may become the +philosophy of a nation. + +All these, abstract philosophy, abstract law, the Mahometan Bible, Codes +of War, with the Churches, Hospitals, Castles, Palaces, which they +involve, while seeking to catch the joys of eternity, serve in reality to +obliterate and erase eternity altogether, and the children of men schooled +in these philosophies behold the vast of Nature shrunk before their +shrunken eyes. After the shrinkage there can only arise a philosophy of +the five senses, and then Newton and Locke, especially Locke, Rousseau and +Voltaire, have it all their own way. + +From all this Blake looked for deliverance to the thought-creating fires +of Orc, which had flared up in France, and might be expected to spread +over Europe, and set even Asia in a conflagration. The Kings of Asia, snug +in their ancient woven dens, are startled into self-exertion, and emerging +uneasily from their dens, call on kings, priests, counsellors and privy +admonishers of men to use their immemorial rights to teach the Mortal +Worms, and keep them in the paths of slavery. Happily, Orc's fires are +insatiable. Raging in European darkness, he arose like a pillar of fire +above the Alps, and, while "milk and blood and glandous wine in rivers +rush," led the wild dance on mountain, dale, and plain, till the sullen +earth shrunk away, and there dawned the eternal day. + +_The Book of Los_ (engraved 1795) begins with the lament of Eno, aged +Mother, as she recalls the "Times remote, when love and joy were adoration +and none impure were deemed." For now, alas! Los, who alone could teach +joy and liberty, is bound "in a chain and compelled to watch Urizen's +shadow." Yet he cannot be bound for ever. Maddened by hard bondage, he +rends asunder the vast Solid that has bound him, only to fall through the +horrible void of error--"Truth has bounds, Error none"--till his +contemplative thoughts arise and throw out some sort of standing-ground +amidst the dire vacuity. Urizen by his contemplative thoughts, it will be +remembered, had created "a wide World of solid obstruction." Now the two +daemons become rivals, and the grim conflict of the ages is waged +incessantly. Los with hammer and tongs organizes lungs (understanding, see +Swedenborg), and some Light even appears; but the book closes with no sign +of the ultimate triumph of Los, for Los and Urizen are here rivals: there +can be no victory until they cease to be rivals, and re-enter into the +union of the eternal order. + +_The Book of Ahania_ (engraved 1795) gives the story of Fuzon, Urizen's +most fiery son, and therefore the one most obnoxious to his curse. He is +mortally wounded by a poisoned rock hurled at his bosom from his father's +bow, and his corse is nailed to the topmost stem of the Tree of Mystery, +which is religion. Then follows the sad and beautiful lament of +Ahania--the wife and emanation of Urizen, and mother of the murdered +Fuzon. She recalls, like Eno, the former days, when Urizen stood in the +divine order, and she, his lover and wife, joyed in the transports of +love, when her heart leaped at the lovely sound of his footsteps, and she +kissed the place whereon his bright feet had trod; when she knew the +thrilling joys of motherhood, and nursed her Babes of bliss on her full +breasts. These things were now but a memory. Urizen with stern jealous +cruelty had put her away, compelling her to walk weeping over rocks and +dens, through valleys of death, a shadow upon the void, and on the verge +of nonentity, a deep Abyss dividing her from her eternal love. Thus she +weeps and laments, wearing a sorrow's crown of sorrows, the remembering +happier things. + +These short prophetic books, though entirely congenial to the author, were +written in a tongue unknown to the public, general or particular. There +was every sign that Blake would continue to produce more works, and even +on a much larger scale, in this particular kind of composition, and the +signs were equally clear that he must look to something else to procure +the wherewithal that would enable him and his wife to live. + +This something was, of course, engraving, but even the demand for _his_ +engraving was growing less, and the grim spectre of poverty made his +unwelcomed and uncalled-for appearance along with the spectres whom Blake +could command. Over this oppressive and grinding spectre he had no command +at all. + +In 1796 he was asked by Miller, a publisher in Old Bond Street, to make +three illustrations to be engraved by Perry for Stanley's English +paraphrase of Buerger's _Lenore_. The elements of romance and weird horror +in Buerger's work were quite in keeping with a side of Blake's nature that +had shown itself in _Elinor_, and so the illustrations were accomplished +with marked power and success. + +The same year he was engaged on designs for Young's _Night Thoughts_, +intended to illustrate a new and expensive edition of what was then +considered one of England's great classics. The work was to be published +by Edwards, of New Bond Street. + +Blake was less free and happy illustrating Young than Buerger. Young has +since been slain by George Eliot, but even if she had not killed him, his +popularity must have waned in another generation or two. For there was +very little healthy human blood in his veins. He was other-worldly, and so +was Blake; but whereas Blake saw in the other world a world of +transcendent beauty of which this world was the vegetable mirror, Young +saw in it only a reflection of his own particular world. Hence Blake was a +mystic, and Young an egotist. Blake forgot himself in the magnificence of +eternity, Young's religion was "egotism turned heavenwards." + +This is probably the reason why Blake's designs for Young were among the +least powerful and interesting things that he did. Give him the Book of +Job, or Dante, and he transcends himself, but with Young or Blair to work +upon, though he does remarkable work, yet it somehow falls short of his +best. + +Mr Frederick Shields, who covered the walls of the Chapel of the Ascension +with strange pinks and ten thousand hands, has analysed all the more +important of Blake's designs, which amounted to five hundred and +thirty-seven. Of these only forty-three were published. _The Night +Thoughts_ was to appear in parts: only one part was published, and Young +was handed over to Stothard in 1802 before he was to be, in an elaborate +dress, a complete success. + +The following year (1797) Blake was at work on _The Four Zoas, or The +Death and Judgment of the Ancient Man_. He revised this work a few years +later at the time he was planning the _Milton_ and _Jerusalem_. I shall +have something to say about it when dealing with _Jerusalem_. I will only +say just now that the minor prophetic books were preliminary trials to his +big flights, and when here, as in _Jerusalem_, a big flight is made, it is +found that Blake's mythology has received its completion, and that all the +things fermenting in him and striving for utterance do, in these long +poems, come to the surface. Anyone who would know him intimately must not +be discouraged by their extraordinary appearance, but struggle with them, +as with a foreign language, until they yield the last secrets of their +mystic author. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +WILLIAM HAYLEY + + +William Hayley, "the poet," as he delighted to call himself, enjoyed a +wide reputation as the author of _The Triumphs of Temper_, which appeared +in 1780 and was intended as a poetical and pleasing guide to young ladies +how to behave under the provocation of testy fathers and sour aunts, with +the promise of a peerless husband if their tempers were triumphant. + +For us the poem is pleasantly incongruous and stirs to laughter in the +wrong places. The perfect heroine Serena, set down in the midst of +artificial society by day, is transported to infernal and supernal regions +by night. In the Inferno she sees all the wicked vices in action, and in +the Paradise the graces attending on their queen Sensibility. Hayley +humbly hoped to emulate Pope's satire in treating of Serena's days, and +Dante's sublimities in her nights. He was singularly fortunate in the +artists he found to embellish his darling offspring. Stothard and Maria +Flaxman, in turn, supplied charming designs, and even Romney was induced +to present the divine Emma as Sensibility with her pot of mimosa, to whom +Stothard had already done more than justice. + +Hayley had been a close student all his life, having mastered Greek and +Latin and the more important modern languages. He had read extensively the +world's best literature. Taught by Meyer, he had taken up miniature +portrait painting till he excelled his master and his eyes failed. He +wrote plays which Garrick nearly liked, but which the undiscerning public +never liked at all. He reckoned himself not merely a connoisseur in art, +music, architecture, and sculpture, but also as one who might have +distinguished himself in any one of these difficult arts had envious time +permitted. Confident that Heaven had bestowed on him her best gift of +poetry, he felt it his duty to renounce his opportunity to excel in so +many arts and devote himself to that which all discerning people +acknowledged to be the highest. + +_The Triumphs of Temper_ was his first great success, and the many highly +flattering things said to him by artists and famous literary men confirmed +him in the faith, though he had never really doubted, that he was a man of +genius. That was the opinion of elegant Mrs Opie, feeling Anna Seward, +diffident Romney, copious Hannah More, and portentously learned Edward +Gibbon. Yet time has been pitiless with the bard of Sussex, and instead of +discovering a steady or even a flickering light shining in the gross +darkness of his times, we of the twentieth century can see in him, if we +take the trouble to see at all, nothing but an amusingly solemn specimen +of a male Blue-stocking. + +With so assured a position and never a shadow of self-doubt, he was able +to live with himself on most cordial terms of good temper and serenity, +and, like others of his type, extend his self-esteem to his fellows, +particularly if they were publicly admired. To these he generally effected +an acquaintance by a polite little letter of self-introduction. + +His most important catch was Romney, to whom he was introduced by Meyer in +the autumn of 1776. Hayley possessed accidental advantages over Romney in +good birth and education. Romney was sufficiently impressed through +self-conscious lack of these, and when in addition he found that his +diffidence was met by Hayley's confidence, his depression by serenity, he +allowed him to gain that ascendancy over him which was out of all +proportion to his intrinsic merit, and which has irritated all biographers +of the artist against the poet. Yet if Hayley contrived to get possession +of Romney and his pictures, he also helped him for a considerable time to +fight against his melancholy. Let us in fairness remember that. + +Another important friend was Cowper, whom Hayley caught considerably later +in life. Visits were exchanged, and Hayley set himself with much good will +to combat the ghastly melancholia that was getting its death-grip on him. +After Cowper's death there was some friendly wrangling between Hayley and +Lady Hesketh about who should write his Life. Hayley was easily persuaded +to undertake it, and by its accomplishment won for himself a latter rain +of gratifying applause just when his popularity seemed to be on the +decline. + +Hayley lived till 1820, which was actually long enough to outlive his +public. His _Life of Romney_ was not a success. He and his works would +have died together but for his unfortunate habit of fastening himself on +to great men. His cancerian grip of them has given him vicarious +immortality, and made him obnoxious to the kicks of those who write the +lives of Romney, or Cowper, or Blake. + +The particular friend of Hayley who most concerns us here was Flaxman. He +introduced Blake to Hayley from motives of pure kindness, knowing Blake's +struggle to live, and believing that Hayley was just the man to help him. + +Flaxman had drawn Hayley's attention to Blake in a letter written as early +as 1784, in which he quotes Romney as saying that Blake's historical +drawings rank with those of Michael Angelo. But not until 1800 did the two +men meet. Early in that year--May 6th--Blake wrote to Hayley to condole +with him on the loss of his son Thomas Alphonso, who had been studying +sculpture with Flaxman. By September it was settled that Mr and Mrs Blake +should leave Lambeth and go and settle at Felpham, where Blake would be +only a stone's-throw from Hayley, and ready to help him in his poetical +and biographical works by engraving for them suitable designs. + +Blake was destined to stay three years at Felpham, and he always regarded +this period as marking a most important crisis in his life. Since the +publication of his _Poetical Sketches_ in 1783 he was conscious of being +under a cloud. His visions that had been so bright and inspired him to +songs of such divine simplicity had not vanished, but they had lost their +crystalline clearness. His cloudy vision appeared in uncertain art. It is +true that his allegiance to the linear schools never wavered, and Michael +Angelo remained the supreme master in his eyes, but for a time he was +fascinated by the luscious ornament and colour of the Venetian school, and +with his passion for uniting contraries believed that he might marry +Florence and Venice. The same uncertainty appeared in his spiritual life. +We have followed him through various stages of rebellion, and seen how his +faith in rebellion received a rude shock from the Reign of Terror. Since +then he was learning more and more to explore the riches of the past, but +he had not gone far enough to place his rebellion and to see it and that +of his rebel contemporaries in its proper historical perspective. He was +disturbed also by a restless ambition of worldly success. Many men whose +gifts were much inferior to his own were famous and rich. Sir Joshua did +all that a spiritually blind man could do, and was reckoned with the +giants. Romney, whose art Blake much preferred to Reynolds's (he was +decidedly of the Romney faction), on account of its greater simplicity and +more scrupulous regard to outline, was sufficiently famous and +remunerated; but Blake, whose gifts were rarer than any, had scant +recognition and scant money, and he still hoped that with an influential +patron he might take his place in contemporary fame, and incidentally make +enough money to relieve him of all anxiety for the future. For he was +being ground by poverty. His wants were simple enough--food, clothing, +materials of work--but when the supply falls even a little below the want, +then the grinding process begins and carries on its inexorable work until +the spirit breaks. But now friend Flaxman had introduced him to poet +Hayley, who was not only famous for his literary work, but also for a +remarkable and untiring zeal in the service of those he reckoned his +friends. + +Blake's hopes rose high, and his spirits overflowed. He wrote an +enthusiastic letter to Flaxman attributing to him all his present +happiness, and enclosing lines in which he recalls his successive friends +"in the heavens"--Milton, Ezra, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Paracelsus, +Boehme--and concludes by affirming that he has seen such visions of the +American War and the French Revolution that he "could not subsist on the +earth, but by conjunction with Flaxman, who knows to forgive nervous +fear." Flaxman had studied Swedenborg, and could perfectly understand such +language. + +On September 21st, 1800, Sunday morning, he writes to the "dear Sculptor +of Eternity" that he has arrived at their cottage with Mrs Blake and his +sister Catherine, and that Mr Hayley has received them with his usual +brotherly affection. + +He found Felpham "a sweet place for study." The quiet, cleanness, +sweetness, and spiritual atmosphere of the place stirred his cosmic +consciousness and gave him quick access to the great memory reaching back +far beyond his mortal life, and enabled him to recall his works in +eternity that were yet to be produced in time. + +And Hayley was excessively kind. Still under a cloud, shaken in +self-confidence, Blake's consequent diffidence united with his instinctive +trust of men, and for a month he believed that Hayley was a prince. + +Hayley was busy decorating his "marine villa," to which he had lately come +from Eartham. Flaxman had already been drawn in to help, much as Mrs +Mathew had used him at an earlier date; and now Blake was bidden to paint +a set of heads of the poets which were to form a frieze to Hayley's +library. Hayley was at work on some ballads, _Little Tom the Sailor_ and +others, to which Blake was to contribute designs. _Little Tom_ was for the +benefit of a Widow Spicer at Folkestone and her orphans, as Blake +understood, and also for the emolument of Blake, as we learn from a letter +of Hayley's to the Reverend John Johnson. + +Hayley always loved to teach his friends. He had been anxious to improve +Romney's epistolary style; and now it occurred to him that he might teach +Blake miniature portrait painting. As usual, his purpose was thoroughly +kind. He did not think that Blake's work had much marketable value; but he +believed that if he proved an apt pupil he could procure him plenty of +sitters from among his neighbours who would pay well, and thus Blake would +become a real success. + +In this Hayley showed himself a wise child of this world, but hardly a +child of light. Blake's genius did not lie in drawing portraits. A face +for him immediately became a symbol, and lost its time traits as it gained +in eternal significance. It is often said that Enitharmon was Mrs Blake; +but if this were so, she was Mrs Blake as no one but Blake could ever see +her. In reality he possessed the faculty which was pre-eminent in the +authors of the Book of Genesis and St John's Gospel. As the characters of +Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Peter, James, and John were seen and +portrayed in an eternal light, so likewise Blake would have striven to +present his opulent sitters, but the result would not have been that for +which they would have been willing to pay their money. + +Blake took kindly and without question to the new task. "Miniature," he +says, "has become a goddess in my eyes.... I have a great many orders, and +they multiply." Hayley was glowing with satisfaction. But Blake, in one +little month, after repeated efforts of self-deception, could no longer +hide from himself that he saw Hayley as he really was. He was learned, of +course, and genteel, and kind, and admired with gush what it was correct +to admire. But of insight there was none. He was born under a watery sign +and not a fiery. He was really a crab ambling around his enclosed garden +with his lame leg, and getting his claws into the tender skin of those +who, he had been told, were really men of fire. + +Blake's disappointment was bitter. His patron was blind to his real +genius, to which he must at all costs be faithful. Hayley was, and +continued to be, very much a corporeal friend, but he was a spiritual +enemy. Blake's fond hopes were dashed. He tottered on the verge of a +horror of great darkness, and escaped the darkness only by falling into a +mild and pleasant slumber, lulled by Hayley's amazing amiability, +mildness, and crooning serenity. From this slumber he might--who +knows?--never have awakened, but for the discernment of his real +friends--Flaxman and Butts--whose faith finally aroused him and drew him +away from the enchanted ground. + +But though he saw, he said nothing. His spiritual friends (on the other +side) commanded him "to bear all and be silent, and to go through all +without murmuring, and, in fine, hope, till his three years shall be +accomplished." When Hayley was more than usually exasperating, Blake +vented himself in an epigram, and, much relieved, went on quietly. + +Thus, when Blake was convinced that Providence did not mean him to paint +miniatures, he wrote: + + "When Hayley finds out what you cannot do, + That is the very thing he'll set you to do." + +Again, Blake discovered that Hayley's virtues and faults were both of the +feminine order. It was a feminine instinct that had prompted him to write +_The Triumphs of Temper_ and the _Essay on Old Maids_. A brilliant epigram +of Blake's accounts for this odd psychic twist, and flashes Hayley before +us: + + "Of Hayley's birth this was the happy lot: + His mother on his father him begot." + +That was the true state of affairs. But Blake obeyed his spiritual +friends, and for a long time no sign appeared in his letters that there +was anything the matter. + +Hayley was also anxious to teach Blake Greek. Like most men of his times, +he believed that no man could attain to the highest degree of excellence +who had not mastered Greek and Latin. He probably thought that a knowledge +of Greek would at least correct some of Blake's vagaries. Blake was quick +at languages, and soon Hayley was able to write to Johnson: "Blake is just +become a Grecian, and literally learning the language.... The new Grecian +greets you affectionately." + +Blake, however, never attained to his teacher's proficiency; he learnt +just enough to be able to formulate to himself the nature of the Greek +genius, and to see it in relation to his own. "The Muses were the +Daughters of Memory." The inspiration of the Bible was from a higher +source than Memory. Memory is the indelible record of experience. +Inspiration is always a breaking into experience to the creation of +something new. Then only is the new creation handed over to Memory. Thus +Inspiration feeds Memory, but is not its fruit. Imagination is the true +instrument of Inspiration. When Blake saw all this clearly, he wrote in +the Preface to _Milton_: "We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if +we are just and true to our own Imaginations." Greek and Latin have their +abiding place in Memory, and Blake was about to write fine things about +Memory, which he calls the Halls of Los; but for himself they did not +stimulate his imagination. To master them would add to his culture; but +mere culture is always barren. + +Hayley's last attempt to teach Blake was in March 1805, the month in which +Klopstock died. He translated parts of Klopstock's _Messiah_ aloud for +Blake's benefit. Certain lines by Blake with big gaps have been preserved, +which are hard for us to understand. The only thing we are quite sure +about them is that they were written "after _too much_ Klopstock." + +There was one great name that held Hayley and Blake alike at this time. We +know that Blake had always admired Milton's superb gifts, while he +disliked his theology. Blake's special friends had also been preoccupied +with Milton. Fuseli, for example, not only disagreed with Dr Johnson's +strictures on the poet, but he had been inspired by his ardent imagination +to paint a series of pictures illustrating the poet's works, and these had +been on public view at a Milton Gallery opened on May 20th, 1799, and +reopened March 21st, 1800. + +While Blake was with Hayley he naturally heard much of Milton from his +latest biographer; and again their united interest in Cowper led them back +to Milton, because of Cowper's cherished desire to edit Milton, with notes +and translations. + +In 1790, when Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery was a success, "bookseller" +Johnson was fired with the idea of bringing out a magnificent Milton +Gallery, "surpassing any work that had appeared in England." It was to +contain Cowper's notes and translations and Fuseli's illustrations, for +which the best engravers were to be found. The services of Sharpe and +Bartolozzi were enlisted, and Blake was asked to engrave _Adam and Eve +observed by Satan_. The project fell through owing to Cowper's mental +indisposition; but when Hayley was engaged on the _Life of Cowper_ and +Blake on its engravings, Cowper's _Milton_ came uppermost again in their +minds, and it occurred to Hayley that it would be a good plan to bring out +a fine edition of the delayed work, with engravings after designs by +Romney, Flaxman, and Blake. The profits of the work were "to be +appropriated to erect a monument to the memory of Cowper in St Paul's or +Westminster Abbey." To this work was to be added Hayley's _Life of +Milton_, so that the whole necessarily would spread out to three quarto +volumes. The project was abandoned. Instead of the three volumes, one +volume with Cowper's notes finally appeared in 1808, and instead of the +proceeds going to a monument in St Paul's, they were given for the +emolument of an orphan godson of the Sussex Bard. + +Thus Blake's thought and time were fully occupied. Besides the designs for +Hayley's ballads, engravings were required for the Cowper _Life_. Butts +was to be kept supplied with a fresh picture as fast as Blake could paint +it; and his own more secret thought was ruminating over Milton, and his +stay at Felpham, and his dreams for the future. These were to take form in +his longest poetical works--_Milton_, _The Four Zoas_, and _Jerusalem_; +but as they are of extreme importance for understanding Blake, they must +be kept over to another chapter. + +Blake was thoroughly interested in this work, for he admired Cowper, and +considered that his letters were "the very best letters that were ever +published." It is necessary to remember his reverence for Cowper, as also +for Wesley and Whitefield, because in the poems there are many vigorous +attacks made on religion, and some of Blake's modern imitators follow him +in the attack. The moderns for the most part are irreligious, but Blake +professed to love true religion and true science. What he hated above all +things was religion divorced from life and art. Such religion becomes very +intense, as in the Pharisees, and when great decisions are called for, as +in the trial of Christ, it invariably utters its voice on the wrong side. + +Blake's engravings for the Cowper _Life_ were after designs by other +artists, the most important being the head of Cowper by Romney. To engrave +after another is irksome, and there was further irritation when he +found that Hayley was as ready to instruct him how to engrave as to paint +miniatures. + + +[Illustration: MIRTH AND HER COMPANIONS.] + + +Since Hayley could never disguise his inmost thoughts, Blake soon +perceived that he intended to keep him strictly to the graver, as he had +no opinion of his original works, whether in poetry or design. Blake found +relief in painting for Thomas Butts, who was his friend and patron for +over thirty years, and to whom he sent exquisite pictures, and some +letters priceless for their revelation of the writer. + +From these we learn the nature of Blake's spiritual crisis at Felpham. + +Miniature portrait painting drove home to him the vast difference between +historical designing and portrait painting. Portrait requires nature +before the painter's eye, historical designing depends on imagination. +Nature and imagination were as antithetical in Blake's eye as nature and +grace in the theologian's, and just here he kept as far away from +pantheism as he could in his obstinate determination to keep nature and +imagination as separate as the sheep and the goats. While agreeing with +Blake in keeping them apart, I suppose most of us would say that the +finest portrait painting depended on imagination no less than historical +designing. + +The atmosphere of Felpham induced in Blake long fits of abstraction and +brooding, and he pushed his thoughts on miniature forwards to the +recollecting of all his scattered thoughts on art. He determined to +discontinue all attempts at eclecticism. Venetian _finesse_ and Flemish +_picturesque_ were "excellencies of an inferior order" and "incompatible +with the grand style." He was convinced that the reverse of +this--uniformity of colour and long continuation of lines--produces +grandeur. So said Sir Joshua, who did not always practise what he +preached in his discourses; so said Michael Angelo, whose profession and +practice were one; so said Blake, who was decided, while adhering to the +principles of the great Florentine, to be true to his own genius, so that +his work should be as distinct from Michael Angelo's as Caracci's from +Correggio's, or Correggio's from Raphael's. + +Here was strength for Blake in knowing his own mind about his art and +methods, and following it. It helped him out of his paralysing diffidence, +which Hayley fostered, and made more clear the real issue between him and +his patron. He strove to see the situation in the largest light possible. +The old question of God's providence exercised him. Did God bring him to +Felpham? Did God keep him there? If so, it must be because it was not fit +for him at present to be employed in greater things. That thought kept him +patient. When it is proper his talents will be properly exercised in +public. But God guides by cleansing man's understanding and pushing him +forwards to a decision. He understood his art, yet Hayley objected to his +doing anything but the mere drudgery of business. He trusted his art, and +he saw how he must work. Let him trust himself, and then? He saw all +clearly now, as he had seen it in the first month, although he had stifled +his apprehensions. God had given him a great talent. It would be affected +humility to deny it. If he stayed with Hayley he would paint miniatures, +make money, and make his beloved Kate comfortable for life; but he would +sell his divine birthright. If he obeyed God by following the gifts He had +bestowed on him, then farewell to Hayley and lovely Felpham: he must +return without delay to London, and once more he and Kate together must +face the grinding life of poverty. Anyone who knows Blake must know what +decision he would make. He made it silently, irrevocably. By the +beginning of October 1803 he and Kate were back again in London, lodging +in South Molton Street, with a sense of escape and liberty which more than +compensated for the uncertain prospect of the future. + +Blake had not quite finished with Felpham. Before leaving he had had a +disagreeable affair with a private in Captain Leathe's troop of 1st or +Royal Dragoons. From a letter of Blake's to Mr Butts, dated August 16th, +1803, we learn that this man was found by him in the garden, invited to +assist by the gardener without his knowledge. He desired him politely to +go away; and on his refusal, again repeated his request. The man then +threatened to knock out his eyes, and made some contemptuous remarks about +his person. Blake thereupon, his pride being affronted, took the man by +the elbows and pushed him before him down the road for about fifty yards. +In revenge, the soldier charged Blake with uttering sedition and damning +the King. Blake had no difficulties in gathering witnesses for his +defence. He was summoned before a bench of justices at Chichester and +forced to find bail. Hayley kindly came forward with L50, Mr Seagrave, +printer at Chichester, and protege of Hayley's, with another L50, and +himself bound in L100 for his appearance at the Quarter Sessions after +Michaelmas. The trial came off at Chichester on January 11th, 1804. The +Duke of Richmond presided as magistrate. Hayley had procured for the +defence Samuel Rose (Cowper's friend), and between them they had no +difficulty in releasing Blake. + +There would have been no need to repeat this story, except that the event +made a deep impression on Blake. Skofield, the soldier's name, became in +his mind an abiding symbol, and the soldier's contempt for his person +decided him to change his deportment. + +Blake's humble birth and childlike trust of his fellows had united to +produce in him a too passive and docile manner. There was plenty of fire +within, and the lamb knew how to roar; but he judged that his roar need +not be provoked if his appearance somehow warded people off from taking a +liberty with him. Diffidence is not a virtue. Blake's too passive +deportment changed as he gradually became more self-confident. Hence the +Skofield episode left a lasting mark on both his mind and body. + +Blake's decisive step in leaving Hayley and following his own will +immediately preceded the noonday glory of his genius. Hayley must have +thought that Blake was extremely ungrateful after the invariable kindness +that he had shown him; and if Hayley liked to call his neighbouring +friends around him and put his case to them, probably all, without a +single dissentient voice, would have agreed that he had shown himself a +Christian and a gentleman, and that charity itself could not demand of him +to trouble himself any further about such a crazed visionary as Blake. +Blake not only thought otherwise, but turning to the Gospel as he was wont +to do, he found a word of Christ that convinced him that Christ was on his +side. "He who is not with me is against me." There were a thousand +evidences that Hayley was not with the real Blake that was striving to +manifest himself in time, and therefore he was against him, and an enemy +to his genius. Blake went to Felpham shaken in himself and diffident. When +there is diffidence (dispersal of faith) there is a lamentable waste of +precious energy. Blake left Felpham reassured that the light he had seen +in his youth was the true light, and confident (confidence is +concentration of faith) that if he remained faithful to his real self, he +would also be found on the side of Christ, and that this true +self-confidence must result in beautiful work of the creative order. That +was the supreme hour in his life. The full vision must come. Like +Habakkuk, he was on his tower, assured that though it tarry it would come +and not tarry. He was not impatient. "The just shall live by his faith." +Blake had faith, and he asked no more; but he gained a thousandfold more, +and the full vision came to him in a way that must seem odd to a child of +the world, but wonderfully appropriate to one who understands what is the +nature of the fire that sustains and consumes the artist's soul. + +During the months of 1803-4 a certain Count Truchsess, who owned a +valuable collection of pictures, exhibited them at a gallery in the New +Road, opposite Portland Place, London. The pictures were by German, Dutch, +Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and French masters. The masters included Albert +Duerer, Hans Holbein senior, Breughel, Vandyck, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da +Vinci, Bourdon, Watteau. + +Blake went to see the pictures, and must have been unusually excited and +thrilled at seeing works by Michael Angelo and Albert Duerer directly, and +not through the blurred medium of poor engravings. The divine frenzy +stirred in his soul. The next day, suddenly, he was enlightened with the +light he enjoyed in his youth. The cloud that had hung over him for twenty +years vanished, the grim spectre (reason) who had haunted his ways and +checked his inspiration fled with the cloud. Blake was drunk with +intellectual vision, and in his drunken hilarity came to himself, knew +what was his proper work, and once for all gave himself with passionate +surrender to that which his whole and undivided being saw to be good. + +It will take us the rest of our time gathering some of the fruits of +Blake's richly matured genius. + +Blake wrote an enthusiastic account of his mystic experience to Hayley, of +all men--Hayley who had so exasperated him, and made him sore, and, in his +soreness, say biting things. Now he was thoroughly at peace with himself, +and could regard Hayley with the kindness and tolerance that before had +been impossible. For a while he continued to correspond with him while he +was occupied with his _Life of Romney_. Blake engraved a portrait of the +artist for the frontispiece which never appeared, and a fine engraving of +Romney's _Shipwreck_, which appeared along with the other engravings by +Caroline Watson. The _Life of Romney_ was a dreary performance. Like the +_Life of Cowper_, it revealed its subject only when it gave his letters. +For the rest, it abounds in a welter of elegant eighteenth-century words +and phrases which assure us that "the poet" never saw even Romney and +Cowper as they really were, and therefore it is not surprising that he saw +in Blake merely a mild and harmless visionary who might do paying work if +only he would listen to the wise counsel that he was always ready to give. + +Peace be with Hayley! Among those that appear before Peter's Gate, we +cannot help thinking that he will be more readily admitted than the vast +crowd of eighteenth-century squires who will knock at the gate, and stamp +and fume if it is not opened to them on the instant. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE BIG PROPHETIC BOOKS + + +Blake's "three years' slumber," as he called it, hypnotized, I presume, by +Hayley's lulling kindness, were amongst the most important in his life. If +he slumbered, yet his dreams were unusually active; and, since feelings +are more intense in dreams than when wide-awake, it is not surprising that +Blake's inner life was in a violent commotion. Any stirring of his feeling +immediately set his supersensual faculty vigorously to work. Visible +persons and things were tracked back to invisible principalities and +powers, his cosmic consciousness quickened, the need to create possessed +him, and he found relief only in giving rhythmic expression to his +spiritual reading of mundane things. + +This was the mental process that we saw at work in his _French Revolution_ +and _America_. Now it was moving among the persons and things connected +with his own life; but it is not less important, for the same mighty +agencies govern individuals and nations alike, and link them up together, +so that they are interchangeable manifestations of eternal laws and +states. + +The practical outcome was _Milton_, _Jerusalem_, and a revision of _The +Four Zoas_, begun some time about 1795. These claim our close attention, +for they contain, for those who have patience to probe their forbidding +exterior, the treasure of one who had run the road of excess, not of +profligacy but rebellion, and now reached the palace of wisdom. + +On April 25th, 1803, Blake wrote to Thomas Butts: "I have written this +poem (_Milton_) from immediate dictation." Later in the same year (July +6th), he writes: "I can praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any +other than the secretary; the authors are in Eternity. I consider it the +grandest Poem that this world contains. Allegory addressed to the +intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal +understanding, is my definition of the most sublime Poetry." In the +Preface to _Milton_ Blake asserts, in effect, that Shakespeare and Milton +were shackled by the Daughters of Memory, who must become the Daughters of +Inspiration before work of the highest creative order can be produced. +Here he regards Memory as a hindrance, and comparing the Preface with the +above quotations, we learn that he strove to put Memory aside while the +authors in Eternity were dictating to him. + +But in the _Jerusalem_ there are, scattered throughout, references to what +he calls the Halls of Los, familiar to readers of mystical literature as +the Akashic or Etheric records, and called by Yeats the great Memory. + +"All things acted on Earth are seen in the bright Sculptures of Los's +Halls, and every Age renews its powers from these Works."[4] + +Here Memory serves to renew an age, and then becomes the recipient of the +age's inspired works. + +These passages, taken together, open up again the great questions of +Inspiration, Memory, Creation, Mechanism, and since each one of these +words is now made to stand for differing conceptions, they are ambiguous, +and we may not use them without first defining sharply what we mean. We +speak of the true poet like Shakespeare, the true mystic like Blake, the +true saint like Catherine of Siena, and the true Book like the Bible as +all being inspired, yet in each case the inspiration is of a different +order. The common element which justifies the one word is originality. +Shakespeare's inspiration depends on the great Memory, on his own complex +nature, and his consuming spirit of observation; but at the moment of his +inspiration, all these things seem in abeyance, and the words well up as +if a spirit not himself had given them to him. His originality consists in +the unique impression that his rich understanding gives of the elements +supplied by the Past and Present, but not in the creation of a new +element. The same may be said of Dante, Milton, Shelley. + +The inspiration of the Bible contains all these elements, which constitute +its purely human side, but there is something else which has given it its +supreme power in all ages. The writers of the Bible remember and observe +and think, but they also utter themselves as they are moved by the Holy +Ghost. It is this last mysterious happening that inspires the creative +element. The inspired poet has aided his observation and experience by +drawing on the great Memory, the inspired Bible has added to the great +Memory something that was not in it before. The poet can renew us, yet +keeps us within the circle of the cosmic consciousness. The Bible can +inspire us and lift us out of the circle far above the seven heavens of +the cosmos. And that is our rescue from that nightmare of eternal +recurrence which set Nietzsche's fine brain tottering down to its +foundations. + +The inspiration of the poet is general, and that of the Bible unique; but +there still remains a special kind to which Blake, like many other +mystics, laid claim. + +When Blake was perplexed at Felpham, he referred to his spiritual guides, +who were in their turn subject to God. They, according to him, were the +real authors and inspirers of his prophetic books. This sort of language +was rare in the eighteenth century, but is quite familiar to readers of +theosophical books, ancient or modern. + +They teach that there are seven planes of consciousness from the physical +to the mahaparanirvanic, which together make up the cosmos. The two +highest planes are beyond the reach of human conception; but there are not +a few to-day who claim to have attained to the fifth nirvanic plane. Here +the consciousness is so finely developed, and its vibrations respond so +readily, that the subject comes into touch with other intelligences, and +often submits to them entirely for guidance. + +In St Paul's day this teaching was familiar at Ephesus in the form of +gnosticism. He did not disbelieve in the reality of the seven planes, but +he disagreed with the gnostics in their blind faith in the trustworthiness +of the guides. He believed that many of them were so evil that when +Christians became conscious of them, they needed the whole armour of God +to protect them against their wiles. Here is the difference between the +Christian and pantheistic teaching. The pantheist thinks that because a +thing is spiritual it is therefore holy and good; Christianity believes in +fallen spiritual beings. The pantheist believes that to reach the nirvanic +plane is to attain to holiness; Christianity says that all the planes of +the cosmos are tainted, and if one reached even the seventh, one would +still have need of cleansing. Theosophy keeps one for ever within the +cosmic circle; Christianity lifts one beyond the circle into the ascended +Christ, and teaches that one is safe on the different subtle planes of +consciousness only while one abides in Him. Doubtless there are good +guides, but the danger is great because it is so difficult to try the +spirits. + +Blake here as elsewhere wavers between the two views. With certain +reservations he dips on the Christian side. He travels round the cosmos, +but in a spiral; and the top of his spiral--his Jacob's Ladder--reaches +not to the seventh plane but to the Throne of God, which is far above the +charmed circle. Hence man is able to climb beyond the defiled cosmos into +the pure heaven of God. That is his redemption. + +Blake's vision, then, ranging freely among the planes of consciousness, +gives him access to the great Memory which is within the cosmos; and at +rare moments he goes beyond the cosmos, and then his words proceed from +the highest inspiration. + +In appraising the value of Blake's defamation of the Greeks' inspiration, +one must remember that he was not a profound Grecian. His studies with +Hayley cannot have carried him into the heart of the Greek genius. When he +limits its inspiration to Memory, there is no scholar, I imagine, that +would agree with him. The Greeks did make an invaluable contribution to +the world's memory; and while one source of their inspiration came from +the past, we must further admit that it was the past wedded to the present +which actually produced something new, that is, of the creative order. + +Blake's own inspiration when it came from his spiritual guides is not of +such a high order as the Greek's at his highest. The so-called guides, if +we may trust St Paul, are inside of the cosmos, like the great Memory, and +their source of wisdom is from this world, which is the arena of the +Church in her militant course. It is only by watching her that they are +able to get glimpses of the manifold wisdom of God. Hence to place oneself +under their guidance is a hindrance to receiving that highest inspiration +that comes direct from the Spirit of God. + +Blake was wrong, too, in his efforts to shut off Memory. Of course he +could not succeed. Every page of _Jerusalem_ shows that Memory was at work +though shackled. Memory alone could have made it coherent and a luminous +whole, as it had made _Paradise Lost_; but it was not free enough to keep +its different scenes, often very beautiful, from flying far apart, and the +imagination grows weary in trying to capture the complete picture. + +The one thing in these poems that we can positively affirm to be new is +their symbolism, and that cannot be defended. Symbolism is beautiful only +as it is universal, or can become so. It should be one language against +many tongues. But Blake's is not even the tongue of a nation or a tribe. +It is his own private invention, and, incidentally, uncouth, forbidding, +unintelligible, and in actual fact a little insane. It is true that we can +learn his symbolism after much labour; but a beautiful and catholic +symbolism is the one thing that we have a right to understand, without +learning, through the imagination, which Blake always affirmed to be +divine. + +Blake could not afford to indulge these idiosyncrasies. Like all mystics, +he found it difficult to adjust the inner things that were real to him to +the outer that were but a shadow. Since most people find the outer things +are the substantial reality, they are not only moving in a different world +from that of the mystic, but they are puzzled to know when the letter of +his statements is to be taken. + +Ezekiel says that he ate his meat baked with cow's dung; Blake, that +Hayley, when he could not act upon his wife, hired a villain to bereave +his life. We know sufficient of Blake's relation to Hayley to understand +that Hayley's murderous purpose was towards Blake's spiritual life, not +his corporeal, and that he tried to prevail on Blake through his wife. We +may hope also that Ezekiel did not really eat "abominable flesh," or lie +for a preposterously long time on his left side. We mention the mystic's +hazy treatment of external actions, to explain Blake; but we hope the +mystic of the future will be more considerate of what his words are likely +to convey to others, and then clear them of all ambiguity. + +Blake should have guarded himself perpetually here, but was too proud or +wilful to do so. Hence with his merging of inward and outward things, and +using the same language for both, added to his private symbolism, what +should have been his greatest poems have become submerged continents in +which you may discover endless treasures only if you dare to dive, and can +hold your breath under water. + +Let us dive for the sake of understanding the growth of Blake's mind. + +I will take _Milton_ separately, and _The Four Zoas_ and _Jerusalem_ +together. + +Blake's feelings towards Milton had always been divided. He saw in him the +highest order of poetic genius, but also, ominously present, the spirit of +reason (Urizen) enthroned in the wrong place, and a servile love of the +classics that placed him under the heel of the Daughters of Memory. To +change the metaphor, Milton's Pegasus was ridden by Urizen. + +Blake's final criticism of Swedenborg was that he drew the line in the +wrong place between heaven and hell; and his amendment was to take his two +contraries and marry them. From that time forward his first question in +trying a man's religion was, Where do you draw the line? Popular religion +always draws it in the wrong place. Good things are reckoned evil and evil +things good. But as Blake continued to put his question to the world's +great spirits, he counted twenty-seven different answers that had produced +twenty-seven different churches, each church having its own particular +heaven and corresponding hell. He had hoped to unite all these contraries +as successfully as he had Swedenborg's; but when he came to Christ's +division, finding that nothing would unite His sheep and goats, and His +wheat and tares, he henceforth took Christ's dividing line as absolute, +and the line of any other as right only when it coincided with Christ's. + +Applying this test to Milton, Blake saw that he wrongly divided heaven and +hell, and that this fatal mistake necessarily affected the characters of +his Messiah and Satan. Messiah, who should have stood for the supreme +poetic genius, was the embodiment of restrictive reason, and Satan, who by +immemorial tradition is absolute evil, was endowed with a marvellous +imagination that inevitably brought with it certain virtues. When Blake +inquired for the root cause of this perversion in Milton, he traced it to +the fact that Reason had largely usurped the place of Imagination. He then +took one more customary step. He set Milton in his imagination in the +light of the eternal order. Seen in this perspective, the prime fact about +him appeared that he had fallen in his encounter with Urizen and come +under his dominion, and the last was that his redemption would be effected +only by going down into self-annihilation and death with Christ, and then +rising again with the life of pure imagination. Once imagination (Los) is +supreme, then reason (Urizen) falls into his proper place, and the return +into the eternal order is accomplished. + +During Blake's stay at Felpham, Milton was continually present in the +minds of both himself and Hayley. Hence he was for Blake an actual person +in the Felpham drama, Mr and Mrs Blake and Hayley being with him the chief +characters, and Skofield and his confederates the rabble. Then passing, as +in _The French Revolution_, from actual persons and events to the unseen +things of which they were the temporal manifestation, Blake saw each +person in his eternal state, and as a symbol of that state, and he lost +sight of the earthly puppets, as they were merged into their monstrous and +eternal counterparts. The transition made, the poem is no longer +intelligible to the corporeal understanding, and Hayley might read it a +hundred times without suspecting that he was the villain of the piece. + +The characters are Los, Urizen, Palamabron and Rintrah, sons of Los, +Satan, and Skofield, who keeps his own name. Satan for a time is Hayley, +Palamabron by turns Blake and Wesley, Rintrah, Whitefield. This is a +seemingly harsh judgment of poor Hayley, akin to Michael Angelo's +treatment of Biagio da Cesena; but the harshness is humorously softened +when Satan is discovered decked with half the graces. He is kind, meek, +humble, and complains gently when his kindness fails to call forth +gratitude. He is the personification of Hayley's virtues, which together +make up (hypocritic) holiness. + +Blake had made the startling discovery, which Nietzsche has popularized in +our time, that the graces in wrong places are vices. Nietzsche went on to +make the absurd assertions that humility and pity are the virtues of the +herd and are never right in any place. Blake believed that the graces +coupled with insight and understanding took on a new quality which made +them divine. + +To give examples: Blake, while submissive to Hayley, was humble, but at +the risk of his birthright. + +Hayley, exerting himself to find rich neighbours to sit for Blake to paint +in miniature, was kind, but he was suffocating his genius. + +To the scribes and Pharisees, Christ meek would have been Christ weak. + +Modesty in one who does not know that all things that live are holy is +prudery. + +To pity oneself or another for the troubles that come through slackness is +effeminacy. The true virtue here is to damn. Hence the right place for a +man clothed from head to foot in hypocritic graces is hell, his right name +is Satan. + +But when a man has stripped himself of his virtues, and annihilating +himself goes down with Christ into death, then he rises again into newness +of life and vision, and the graces of the new life, still called by their +old names, but now in their right places, are flaming, beautiful, +irresistible. + +Once Blake saw his man in his setting in eternity, he escaped from his +initial resentment, and he could write calmly to Hayley and subscribe +himself, "Your devoted Will Blake." + +I may remark that Blake did not think he had invented new values, like +Nietzsche, in his indictment of the virtues. His language was his own, but +his conclusions were precisely the same as those of Wesley, Whitefield, +Bunyan, St Paul, when they, in effect, speak of man's righteousness as +filthy rags, and of his need to be clothed with the _living_ righteousness +of Christ before his garment can be reckoned beautiful and clean. + +A few quotations from _Milton_ may be given as Blake's final word on +Hayley. I will write Hayley for Satan, and Blake for Palamabron. + + "Blake, reddening like the Moon in an eclipse, + Spoke, saying, You know Hayley's mildness and his self-imposition; + Seeming a brother, being a tyrant, even thinking himself a brother + While he is murdering the just." + + "How should Hayley know the duties of another?" + + "Hayley wept, + And mildly cursing Blake, him accused of crimes himself had wrought." + + "So Los said: Henceforth, Blake, let each his own station + Keep; nor in pity false, nor in officious brotherhood, where + None needs be active." + + "But Hayley, returning to his Mills (for Blake had served + The Mills of Hayley as the easier task), found all confusion, + And back returned to Los, not filled with vengeance, but with tears. + Himself convinced of Blake's turpitude." + + "Blake prayed: + O God protect me from my friends." + + "For Hayley, flaming with Rintrah's fury hidden beneath his own mildness, + Accused Blake before the Assembly of ingratitude and malice." + + "When Hayley, making to himself Laws from his own identity, + Compelled others to serve him in moral gratitude and submission." + + "Leutha said: 'Entering the doors of Hayley's brain night after night, + Like sweet perfumes, I stupefied the masculine perceptions, + And kept only the feminine awake; hence rose his soft + Delusory love to Blake.'" + + "The Gnomes cursed + Hayley bitterly, + To do unkind thinks in kindness, with power armed; to say + The most irritating things in the midst of tears and love-- + These are the stings of the Serpent!" + +These are enough to show Blake's method, and his remorseless understanding +of Hayley. There is present an irresistible touch of humour which +preserves them from being too bitter. + +For the rest, the poem narrates Milton's encounter with Urizen; his going +down into self-annihilation and death; his judgment, and final redemption +as he ascends to the heaven of the imagination. Milton's heaven is then +the heaven of Jesus, and his hell remains its irreconcilable contrary. + +In this poem Blake's full-grown mythology appears. The mythical persons, +places, states are ominously present; but since they appear with much more +particularity in _The Four Zoas_ and _Jerusalem_, I may pass to them to +extract what is necessary for understanding the mature Blake. + +_Jerusalem_ and _The Four Zoas_ should be studied together. The latter was +begun about 1795, and rewritten at Felpham. The early prophetic +books--_Urizen_, _Los_--stand as preliminary sketches to this large poem. +They are woven into it with scarcely a change of word. + +Blake's great scheme is mainly in line with historical Christianity, which +of course is catholicism. He starts with the eternal order and unity. +Without attempting to explain the origin of evil, he narrates the fall out +of unity and order into diversity and disorder, and how as a consequence +of the fall creation appears. He is obliged to use the word "creation," +but there is no real creation in his cosmogony. There are only three +possible theories of creation. Creation from within God, which is +pantheism, and makes the universe an emanation; creation from something +outside of God, which is dualism, and not likely to be accepted in the +West; and creation out of nothing, which is catholicism. Blake learnt from +Swedenborg the emanative theory. Swedenborg tried to avoid the pantheistic +conclusion of his foundation principle, and believed that he had +succeeded. His doctrine of the human God was certainly fine, and nearly +catholic. Blake sways between the two. His doctrine of creation is +pantheistic, but his affirmation that "God doth a human form display to +those that dwell in realms of day" is splendidly catholic, and so, on the +whole, is his doctrine of the fall. Since Blake's day the problem has +become enormously complicated, because we have to take account of the +vestiges in man's body of an animal ancestry, and the still more +infallible signs in his soul of a divine origin. Perhaps we shall +eventually all come to believe in both evolution and a special creation to +account for man's unique place in the universe. At any rate a denial of +the fall involves a definite departure from historical Christianity, and +it is important to see that it was an integral part of Blake's scheme and +without it that scheme falls to pieces. Not that he pressed the letter of +the Adam and Eve story. It stood for him as a divinely simple witness of +an ancient simplicity and unity from which man has departed by +disobedience and the assertion of a life and a self independent of God. +His way back into unity is by the cross of Jesus Christ, where the +self-hood dies, and the day of judgment, which finally separates in him +the gold from the dross, and presents him in his divine humanity perfect +before the human-divine God. + +Between these two stupendous facts--the fall and the redemption--Blake +finds a place to say all that he wishes about the manifold things of +heaven and earth and hell. + +The unity from which man departs is made up of four mighty ones--the Four +Zoas--who are the four beasts of the Apocalypse, taken from the four +beasts of Ezekiel, who probably appropriated four of the many monstrous +symbolical beasts of Assyria. + +Blake invented names for them. Of these--Urizen, Urthona-Los, Luvah, and +Tharmas--Urizen and Los are by far the clearest conceived figures. Perfect +unity is maintained so long as Los is supreme. Reason is important in its +right place. It becomes an evil when it usurps the place of imagination +and thinks it can see as far. The essence of the fall is disorder. +Redemption restores order, which is unity. Science alone breaks down +because it is built up on observation and induction. Its observation is +insufficient, for it is the observation of a shrunk universe. It gathers +its materials through the five senses. But there are other avenues in +regenerated man. If science were built up on the observation or vision of +the whole instead of a very small part, it would become divine science and +coincident with religion. + +Religion breaks down whether built on nature or experience. If on nature, +it is nature only as seen through limited vision; if on experience, it is +the experience of fallen man, and therefore it is of vital force only when +it transcends nature and becomes super-natural, and rests on a revelation +not from man's experience, however deep, but from God. + + +[Illustration: ALBION. + +_From Jerusalem._] + + +Deism was the particular time-heresy of Blake's day. He came into direct +contact with it through his friend Tom Paine. Deistic religion, to be +adequate for man's need, must rest on perfect nature and perfect +experience. Paine, Voltaire, and Rousseau, in order to provide these +conditions which they saw to be necessary, were driven to make the wild +statement, contrary to all experience, that man is naturally holy and +good, and if he is not so as we know him, it is because he is everywhere +perverted by artificial civilization. Having swallowed this baseless +assumption, the rest was easy. They had only like Godwin to manufacture +some scheme of political justice, or like Rousseau to arrange a social +contract, and then the Millennium would come. + +Against all this Blake protested, but without personal heat. He was well +aware of Paine's deism, when he helped him to escape to France; and of +Voltaire he wrote justly: "He has sinned against the Son of man, and it +shall be forgiven him." He protested and he affirmed: "Man is born a +Spectre, or Satan, and is altogether an Evil." In this uncompromising +affirmation, taken out of the heart of _Jerusalem_, written at the mature +age of forty-seven, he cuts himself off sharply, not only from the +humanitarian deism of his time, but from the pantheism that invaded so +many phases of his thought; he goes beyond the kindly catholic dogma which +allows a residuum of original righteousness in fallen man; and, with +Whitefield and the Calvinists, denies that he has any righteousness left +at all. Hence the utter failure of all empiricism, and the absolute need +of Revelation and a supernatural religion. How near he was getting to Dr +Johnson! Super-nature, of course, presupposes nature. Blake was obliged to +contemplate Nature, and meditate on the ancient difficulties that she +still presents. + +There are many passages in _The Four Zoas_ to show how alive he was to +Nature's loveliness and cruelty. Her cruelty alone convinced him that she +could not be taken as a basis for religion. A natural man building his +character on a natural religion must be as cruel as his mother. The +cruelty finds periodic vent in the lust of war. + +Yet why there is so much cruelty in Nature remains a mystery, even to the +man who has been driven by her to supernaturalism. Blake maintained that +there were two ways of regarding Nature. The natural man, with only five +senses to inform him, looks at her and sees a very small portion of the +infinite, without ever suspecting the infinite. If he sees her loveliness +it will arrest him and hold him fast. The spiritual man, on the contrary, +looks not at but through Nature, to the spiritual world of which it is a +vegetable mirror. + +Here a difficulty presents itself. If Nature be a vegetable mirror of the +eternal world, then her cruelties must reflect eternal cruelties. The +spiritual man may see Nature far differently from the natural man, but +that does not mean that she is merely the picture thrown by man's +subjective self on the great abyss. If man were altogether exterminated +her cruelties would still continue. Since Blake did not deny all existence +to Nature, he was finally obliged to accept the old Christian explanation +so finely summed up by St Paul in the eighth chapter of his Epistle to the +Romans. Sin and disorder originate in the unseen heavens of the cosmos, +where the principalities and powers dwell. Man repeats their sins, and +Nature reflects the disorder of their cosmos. Hence there is no redemption +in the cosmic heavens. Man enters on his redemption only when he bows the +knee to Him who was raised above all heavens. And though "the whole +creation groaneth and travaileth together until now," yet at the great +manifestation of the sons of God she also "shall be delivered from the +bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." + +If the fall be denied, then the sufferings of nature and man must be +referred to evolution, which taken alone solves something, but not the +whole, of the ancient and baffling mystery. + +All this explains finally why the great Memory to which Blake refers so +often in _Jerusalem_ cannot redeem a man. It is shut up in the cosmos. +Memory would keep man in the cosmos even though he were reincarnated a +million times. Memory's real work, whether for creative art or man's +redemption, is in the fact that she gives man standing ground amid the +horrors of infinity, until he takes strong hold of Him who overcame the +world, and is lifted by Him into His ascension glory beyond the maddening +whir of the cosmic wheels. + +In these poems we get Blake's final attitude towards sex and passion. + +Passion is always fire, and as such it is energy. To-day we are apt to use +the word only for sex. In the eighteenth century passion was of any kind, +and appetite stood for sex. With Blake, passion is man's vital worth. It +may flame along many forbidden avenues, but once it has mounted to the +imagination, and is controlled by spirit, then it is the driving force +that makes man's works beautiful and his character spontaneous. + +The passion of sex is, no doubt, the strongest of all. In the early +prophetic books, when Blake was in a fever of rebellion, he affirmed that +the sex passion was holy and should be free. Now in these later +"prophecies" he still maintains, without wavering, the holiness of sex, +but he no longer insists on free-love. He has no place for perversions. He +steadily contemplates the normal impulse, and sees it as the principle of +life impelling to love and children. + +Each man has to solve his own sex problem. Blake's nature was +exceptionally full and passionate. We caught a glimpse of him in his early +married life panting in the whirlwind of sexual desire. It is probably +true that he even contemplated following the patriarchal custom. But +inconveniently for man's theories he has it brought home to him sooner or +later that no man can live to himself alone. Mrs Blake had her feelings; +and though she was the most submissive and loyal of wives, yet she had the +instinctive and normal objection to sharing her husband with others. Blake +might argue that her objection was unreasonable, and that a truly +unselfish woman should rise above such appropriation. But the stubborn +fact remains that the woman who does so rise is either indifferent to her +husband or abnormal, and Mrs. Blake, at any rate, both loving and +unselfish to a heroic degree, was just here inflexible. King Solomon has +sung the praises of a virtuous wife. We may take it as granted that her +price is far above rubies. But the man who imperils his treasure by +putting into practice some theory of free-love, however good that theory +may seem in his own eyes, is worse than a fool; and if he cannot endure +some inconvenience for the sake of keeping the best gift that Heaven can +bestow, he is unworthy to receive it. + +Besides these facts, which must have forced their full attention on Blake +as the years went by, time was modifying his early notions in other ways. +He was an indefatigable worker. When one realizes the immense energy +expended in creative work, and that Blake carried this on day after day, +one sees that much of the sex energy must pass into another channel to +supply the necessary power. + +And lastly Blake's own spiritual life worked the change. As he learnt to +see through Nature to her antetype, so he learnt to see through physical +beauty. A beautiful face was a very transitory manifestation of eternal +beauty. When Blake with Plato had pierced through to the unseen fount of +beauty, then he was no longer a slave to externals. The passion remained, +but transmuted, and legitimate relief was found in the continuous creation +of beautiful things. Doubtless many will be disappointed that Blake's +experience brought him back to traditional morality; but after all the +terms on which he held it--a clean conception of sex, and faithfulness to +a woman worthy of all faith--were not so very narrow and rigorous. They +are terms that every man ought at once to accept, if ever he should be so +fortunate as to have them proposed to him. + +The above ideas are culled from _The Four Zoas_ and _Jerusalem_. I do not +propose any detailed analysis here. This I have done at some length in +_Vision and Vesture_. I will merely point out in conclusion that although +these poems seem to ramble all over the universe inside and outside +without plan or order, there is, in fact, a connecting link in the figure +of Albion. + +Albion is the personification of the divine humanity; but regarded +individually he is fallen man, bound with "the pale limbs of his Eternal +Individuality upon the Rock of Ages." His inward eyes are closed from the +Divine Vision, and so he may be reckoned dead in trespasses and sin. Blake +pronounced the natural man altogether an evil. But Albion is not an image +of total depravity. Within him are all the divine faculties in addition to +the five senses without, but they are closed. If he is to be redeemed, +there is no need to create new spiritual faculties, but to re-create and +make operative those that are already there. Hence Blake drives back of +regeneration to the first generation, when man was made in the image and +likeness of God. Regeneration is the renewal of the ancient image and +likeness through the cross of Christ and the breath of the Divine Spirit. + +Albion, like Lazarus, is sick. "He whom Thou lovest is sick. He wanders +from his house of Eternity." His "exteriors are become indefinite, opened +to pain, in a fierce, hungry void, and none can visit his regions." + +Pained and impotent, he laments like Job: + + "Oh I am nothing if I enter into judgment with Thee. + If Thou withdraw Thy breath I die, and vanish into Hades; + If Thou dost lay Thy hand upon me, behold I am silent; + If Thou withhold Thy hand I perish like a leaf; + Oh I am nothing, and to nothing must return again. + If Thou withdraw Thy breath, behold I am oblivion." + + "Eternal death haunts all my expectations. Rent from Eternal Brotherhood + we die and are no more." + +And so Man like a corse + + "lay on the Rock. The Sea of Time and Space + Beat round the rocks in mighty waves." + +Even his limbs "vegetated in monstrous forms of death." + +He is opaque and contracted. Yet mercifully there is a limit to his +opacity and contraction, named by Blake Satan and Adam; else he would +sleep eternally. The capacity remains to hear the Voice of the Son of God +and live, and until that moment he is guarded in tender care by the "mild +and gentle" Saviour. + +It is Heaven's purpose to awake him. + + "Then all in great Eternity, which is called the Council of God, + Met as one Man, even Jesus--to awake the fallen Man. + The fallen Man stretched like a corse upon the oozy rock, + Washed with the tide, pale, overgrown with the waves, + Just moved with horrible dreams." + +Albion like Milton must tread the difficult way of self-annihilation and +judgment. + +His Day of Judgment is given with marvellous wealth of detail in _The Four +Zoas_, Night IX. But there are still finer passages in _Jerusalem_ which +lead Albion to his final beatitude. + + "Albion said: O Lord, what can I do? my selfhood cruel + Marches against Thee ... + I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of six thousand years, + Dazzling around Thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold; + I know it is my self, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer. + + Jesus replied: Fear not, Albion; unless I die thou canst not live, + But if I die I shall arise again and thou with Me. + This is Friendship and Brotherhood, without it Man Is Not. + + Jesus said: Thus do Men in Eternity, + One for another, to put off by forgiveness every sin. + + Albion replied: Cannot Man exist without mysterious + Offering of Self for Another? is this Friendship and Brotherhood? + + Jesus said: Wouldest thou love one who never died + For thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee? + And if God dieth not for Man, and giveth not Himself + Eternally for Man, Man could not exist, for Man is Love + As God is Love; every kindness to another is a little Death + In the Divine Image, nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood. + + So saying, the Cloud overshadowing divided them asunder; + Albion stood in terror, not for himself but for his Friend + Divine, and Self was lost in the contemplation of faith + And wonder at the Divine Mercy, and at Los's sublime honour." + +Thus Blake leads man back into his ancient simplicity and unity. Order is +restored; and the four mighty ones that warred within to man's +distraction, led captive by Los, are content each to perform his proper +function, and so to prevent any further disturbance of the peace. + +That is a fine consummation, but it is not Blake's last word. Perfect man +must have a perfect City to dwell in. Albion redeemed must build +Jerusalem. Blake began _Milton_ with the fond contemplation of England's +fields and meadows that he had loved in his youth. Calling for his weapons +of war, he sang: + + "I will not cease from Mental Fight, + Nor shall my Sword sleep in my Hand, + Till we have built Jerusalem + In England's green and pleasant Land." + +That vision may seem as far off as the vision of the prophet who declared, +"The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters +cover the sea." But the world's master-spirits have never been content +that a man here and there should save his soul. + +Plato imagined his Republic, Christ His Kingdom of God on earth, St John +his Holy City, St Augustine his City of God. And Blake, whose first dreams +had been in London's great city, still dreamed that man would return to +his ancient simplicity, and build Jerusalem in England's green and +pleasant land. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +CROMEK, SIR JOSHUA, STOTHARD, AND CHAUCER + + +Blake had left Hayley to face poverty again in September 1803. He lodged +at 17 South Molton Street, and from there he continued till December 11th, +1805, to write to the patron who had caused him so much inward +disturbance. As long as he had thought it was possible to be on terms of +complete friendship with Hayley he had quarrelled with him. Now he knew +that such friendship was impossible. He saw Hayley as he was, and after +years of self-conflict he saw himself as he was, and he recognized that +there was no fundamental agreement to bridge over their differences. The +effect of this discovery was to put him at peace with Hayley, and also to +lower his sanguine expectations of a wide fellowship in this world. + +The letters to Hayley are courteous and almost affectionate in tone. +Hayley was occupied with his _Life of Romney_, Blake was hard at work on a +_Head of Romney_ and an engraving of the _Shipwreck_, after Romney. Hence +there are many references to the artist from which we learn how genuine +was Blake's admiration for the classic simplicity and the skilful massing +of the lights and shades of Sir Joshua's great rival. Mr and Mrs Blake +regularly send their love to Hayley and solicitations for his health till +the correspondence gradually lessens, and Hayley, having no further use +for Blake, gently closes it, and takes himself away out of his sight for +ever. The severance was inevitable, and Blake could not be surprised. He +jotted in his note-book: + + "I write the rascal thanks till he and I + With thanks and compliments are both drawn dry." + +And so the patron passes. The artist who has faced poverty is tasting its +bitterness, stirred with the faint hope that he may find another patron +who will be a corporeal friend and not a spiritual enemy. The patron in +due time appeared. Robert Hartley Cromek was his name, print-jobber, +book-maker, publisher, also an engraver who had studied under Bartolozzi. + +This last fact was not auspicious. Blake, we know, had no regard for +Bartolozzi's work, and a pupil of his might prove as little understanding +of Blake's severe art as the Bard of Sussex. Still, there was hope. Cromek +had an admirable business capacity. He understood how to advertise, to +puff, to work the artist, and, what is still more materially important, to +work the public. He had, in a word, all the practical qualities that Blake +lacked. Blake with his love for uniting contraries believed that his art +married to Cromek's practice might produce fame and money, and he was +sorely in need of both. + +At this time Blake was making designs for Blair's _Grave_, which he +intended himself to engrave and publish. These were seen by Cromek, who +admired them, and whose business instinct detected money in them. +Immediately he proposed to publish a new edition of _The Grave_, and made +a verbal agreement with Blake that he should contribute twelve engravings +from his own designs. But, inspired by the same business instinct, it +occurred to him that Blake's designs would sell much better if they were +engraved by one who was known to be able to meet the popular taste. +Accordingly he went off to Schiavonetti, who had been a fellow-pupil of +Bartolozzi, and proposed to him to do the engravings. + +The result was satisfactory to everyone except Blake. His illustrations +appeared in the summer of 1808, and he received twenty guineas for his +designs, but he was naturally furious and resentful against Cromek for +playing him such a trick. + +Cromek was quite right in his judgment that the Blake designs for _The +Grave_ would be popular. Yet this did not arise from any affinity between +Blake and the then famous author of _The Grave_. Blair had been dead for +fifty years. His poem expressed the strict orthodoxy of his day. Its fine +passages are scarcely able to give vitality to the whole. Blake can have +had no sympathy with the long-drawn-out description of the damask-cheeked +maiden lying in her grave, the food of worms. The real genius of +Christianity does not permit of such nauseous details of the +charnel-house. We know how sensitive Blake was to the damask cheek of a +maiden; but we also know that he had come to regard it as the very +transitory manifestation of the eternal beauty, and with his spiritual eye +continually on the "Inviolable Rose" he did not need to remind himself of +the mouldering relics in the grave. + +He selected for what proved to be one of his finest designs Blair's +description of the reunion of soul and body on the Day of Judgment. The +poem repeats the doctrine of the resuscitation of the body that has long +since returned to dust. Blake, of course, repudiated this dogma. He +believed that the spiritual body is already present in one who has been +born again of the spirit; and, therefore, death is the bursting of the +mortal shell that the spiritual body may pass on into its spiritual +environment. Yet with his love of marriages he depicted the rending of +the tomb and the passionate reunion of soul and body, not because he +believed in such a future event, but because that reunion taken +symbolically was marvellously expressive of the rapturous marriage of many +pairs of contraries that man in his day persisted in keeping apart. + +For the rest, Blair's poem was sufficiently universal in its treatment of +death to enable Blake to illustrate him, and yet read his own opinions +into the words he selected. + +Blake's indignation was hot against Cromek, as we can all understand. But +unfortunately his soul was torn with the kindred passion of resentment, +which he was inclined to nurse rather than exterminate. Here a little +reason might have helped him; but his distrust of reason, and his own +passivity, led him to give vent to his resentments against successful men +that strike us as captious and rude. He might plead the example of Christ +in His treatment of the Pharisees, and he did jot down in his note-book +words that I cannot help thinking he applied to himself: + + "Sir Joshua praises Michael Angelo. + 'Tis Christian mildness when knaves praise a foe; + But 'twould be madness, all the world would say, + Should Michael Angelo praise Sir Joshua-- + Christ used the Pharisees in a rougher way." + +In answer to this we can but say that Sir Joshua was not a Pharisee, and +that Blake was not Christ. + +Blake's resentment against Sir Joshua seems to have begun at an interview +when, a very young man, he had shown him some designs, and had been +"recommended to work with less extravagance and more simplicity, and to +correct his drawings." That was the sort of advice that he never would +take at any time. One would have thought that if Sir Joshua was so +palpably a Pharisee, Blake would not have troubled to ask his advice. + +As the years passed, the significant facts about Sir Joshua and Blake were +that the one was famous and rich, the other was unrecognized and poor. +Blake's vision, sharpened just here by the injustice of fame, was +preternaturally quick to discover that Sir Joshua was earthy and of the +earth, while his own aim was the so much loftier one of piercing to the +heavenly reality, and then expressing it by clear, definite, and "sweet +outlines," and making the colours, lights, and shades serve to emphasize +the heaven-revealing lines. + +Sir Joshua died February 23rd, 1792. His coffin was carried to St Paul's +followed by ninety coaches, and the most eloquent man of the day, Burke, +was bidden to sing his praises. In 1808, when everyone was reading the +collected _Discourses_ of Reynolds, Blake too read, and as his custom was, +made copious marginal notes. With the help of these we are able to relate +Blake to Reynolds with a dispassionateness to which Blake could never +attain. + +What must strike any impartial reader of the _Discourses_ is the +extraordinary similarity of the aims of art there set forth with Blake's +own cherished views. Both give the supreme place to Michael Angelo and +extol Raphael. Both depreciate the Venetian and Flemish Schools. Both +reckon good drawing the foundation of great art. The difference between +them is mainly one of emphasis. Blake believed in impulse and instinct, +and Sir Joshua in theoretical and reasoned deliberation. Yet the +reasonable man writes: "If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical +deliberation on every occasion, before we act, life would be at a stand, +and art would be impracticable." And again: "I mean to caution you +against ... an unfounded distrust of the imagination and feeling in favour +of narrow, partial, confined, argumentative theories." Both extol the +grand style--with a difference. Reynolds's conception of the grand style +is derived from the laborious study of the excellencies of many masters. +When he attains to it, he is an epitome of those excellencies. + +He reaches by this means his ideal, his heaven, and its contrary +immediately bounds into view, which he is too urbane to call hell, and +contents himself to designate as the real. Blake's ideal came to him with +overmastering force from his direct vision of the inward reality. Hence he +had no need of the false antithesis of the ideal and the real. Reynolds +extols Michael Angelo and degrades Hogarth. Blake loves both. In +conclusion we say, with only the _Discourses_[5] before us, the +differences between the two men are negligible in a world where two men +can never quite see eye to eye. It is when we turn from the _Discourses_ +to Sir Joshua's accomplished works that we begin to understand what was +reasonable in Blake's furious resentment and attack. + +Sir Joshua preached one thing and practised another. He sang the praises +of the Florentine, Roman, and Bolognese Schools, and painted for all the +world as if Rembrandt were his chief master. + + "Instead of 'Michael Angelo' + Read 'Rembrandt,' for it is fit + To make mere common honesty + In all that he has writ." + +Sir Joshua, after years of toil, painted Nelly O'Brien's petticoat, and we +marvel at the consummate workmanship. Blake, in spite of his faulty +technique and impatience of criticism, lifted the veil that hides the +heavens, and inspires us. We thank those who make us wonder: we owe +something deeper than thanks to those who inspire us. Blake was well aware +that his art was of a loftier kind than that of the President of the Royal +Academy. The one was reckoned the foremost painter of his age, the other +was pitied as a madman. And Blake felt he did right to be angry. + +Let us return to Cromek. + +While Blake was at work on his designs for Blair's _Grave_, he drew a +pencil sketch of _Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims_, which had always +attracted him. Cromek, hopping in and out to see how the Blair designs +were progressing, saw the sketch, and his brain immediately swarmed with +fertile ideas. He proposed that Blake should engrave his design, and he +would push it. But on second thoughts it occurred to him that the subject +was admirably suited to Stothard's genius. Leaving Blake with nothing but +a verbal agreement, he went straight off to Stothard, and proposed that he +should make a design on the subject, for which he would pay him sixty +guineas. Cromek undertook to find an engraver. Blake, who had been a +friend of Stothard for many years, went to visit him, and found him at +work on the _Canterbury Pilgrims_. Unsuspecting, he praised the work. +Afterwards he discovered the part that Cromek had played in the seeming +coincidence. At once he concluded that Stothard was privy to the deceit, +and he included him in his vehement indignation against Cromek, and the +lamb roared. With note-book at hand he jotted: + + "A petty sneaking knave I knew-- + O! Mr. Cromek, how do ye do?" + +Stothard and Blake had been young together. It was he who had introduced +him to Flaxman. The friendship, of course, was not of the closest, for +they followed a very different track in art. + +Flaxman and Blake had a common interest in Swedenborg as well as a supreme +regard for outline, but Stothard's was always an outward eye, never +inward. With a wife and many children, and everlastingly busy producing +his thousands of designs, it was not to be expected that he should dive +into inner causes. His contemporaries were content, and we too, that he +should see the effects in a graceful and poetic glow, and reproduce them +in soothing and graceful compositions. He peered into many times and many +countries, but he was happier when illustrating his contemporaries, +happiest when depicting the chequered career of Clarissa Harlowe. + +Cromek was not wrong in thinking that Stothard would make a successful +picture of the _Canterbury Pilgrims_. He was famous at grouping, had an +eye for horses, and was willing to drudge at the British Museum to clothe +his figures correctly. There was some difficulty about the engraving, +which Cromek had first intended to entrust to Bromley. It passed +successively through the hands of Lewis Schiavonetti, Engleheart, Niccolo +Schiavonetti, and was finally done by James Heath. The result justified +Cromek's calculations. The _Pilgrimage to Canterbury_ was exhibited in all +the great towns of England, and also in Edinburgh and Dublin. It had the +most extensive sale of anything of the kind published within a hundred +years. Everyone bought it and exhibited it, according to Mrs Bray, in +their front parlour. It was reckoned Stothard's masterpiece. And when +Harlow painted Stothard's portrait, he placed in the background a curtain +just sufficiently drawn back to show the finest group of a picture in +which the whole grouping was excellent. + +Meanwhile Blake, determined to dispense with a professional advertiser, +engraved his own design, and put it up for sale at 28 Broad Street, the +house of his birth where his brother James carried on the business. But it +was not to stand alone. It was exhibited together with sixteen historical +inventions, eleven frescoes, seven drawings. Blake wrote a prospectus to +the _Canterbury Pilgrims_ and a _Descriptive Catalogue_ to the whole +collection. One or two people, notably Crabb Robinson, found their way to +the room; and while the praises of Stothard were being sung throughout the +land for a design that had originated from Blake, Blake was tasting the +bitter mortification of knowing that his attempt at self-advertisement and +appeal to the public had failed. + +Although comparisons are odious, we may give ourselves the luxury of +comparing these two rival treatments of a fine subject. + +Stothard's task was the easier of the two. His respect for and knowledge +of Chaucer were much less than Blake's, and from the outset he had no mind +to burden himself by attempting a servile copy of the poet. If the wife of +Bath was just enjoying her fifth husband, then obviously she was no longer +a pictorial subject, and Stothard took off as many years as the lady +herself could have wished. + +His treatment of the religious types was even less faithful. The +protestantism of the eighteenth century regarded monks, friars, abbesses, +and nuns merely as odd curiosities of an odd past. Stothard had religious +feeling, as is evident in his picture _Confirmation_, which Landseer +admired so much, but for him a friar was the type of laziness, and the +monk of gluttony, and his only idea in portraying them was to make the +lines of their chins and stomachs as rotund as possible. + +The idea of a pilgrimage was equally as remote from his mind. It was a +foolishness to be pardoned only because it afforded the artist such +excellent material for form and colour. But if Stothard had no wish to +understand Chaucer's types and point of view, he was overjoyed at the +chance of introducing so many horses, whose evolution from the Middle Ages +was negligible. He had an eye for a horse, and could not resist the +temptation of mounting his pilgrims on much finer horses than Chaucer +provided, or they, for the most part, could afford. Finally he painted a +pleasing background which Mrs Bray says was the Surrey Hills, and Blake +the Dulwich Hills, but in either case were not passed by the Pilgrims in +their journey from the Tabard Inn to Canterbury. + +The picture, as Hoppner said, is a modern one--charming, even captivating, +and if it is not Chaucer, yet Stothard only took the liberty which Blake +was ready to take himself when it suited his purpose. + +Blake, for his part, was enormously attracted by Chaucer. He saw in him a +first-rate example of the poetic genius that can pierce through to the +underlying reality of every kind of man, and embrace him with genial +warmth. He was observer and contemplator, and there was present just that +element of imagination which always produces something original and +creative. + +The first happy result of Blake's capture by Chaucer was that he forgot +for a time his horrid symbolism. When he illustrated his own poems, he +drew his monstrous beasts without check, but now that there was no +possibility of mounting Urizen and Los with the rest of the Pilgrims, he +was driven to use Chaucer's symbolism, which time has proved to be +universal. + +Blake's sympathy here equals that of the elder poet. Like him he sees the +fleshly weakness of the monks and friars, but he sees also, as Stothard +could not, their strength and significance. The cook, the manciple, and +the pardoner are low and coarse types affording the shade, but the parson, +the knight, the squire, the abbess, the Oxford student, and the yeoman are +bright types of human excellence that appear at all times, even in the +eighteenth century, as Blake knew, though in a different dress. + +The host on his good stout horse rightly holds the central place. The +knight and squire lead the party as they ought. The religious types--monk, +friar, abbess, nun, three priests--are grouped together. The most +dignified figure is the parson--the person--seated on a wretched cob, for +he cannot afford a better; and near him, happy in his company, are the man +of law and the yeoman. The wife of Bath, the miller, and the cook are +different studies in sensuality. In the rear are the clerk of Oxenford and +Chaucer himself, the philosopher and the poet, the poet being more +prominent, since he with his poetic genius means more to us finally than +the philosopher. Last of all comes the reeve, whose position accords with +his office as steward. + +Hence there is a spiritual significance in the picture. The pilgrims are +real Chaucerian people on a real pilgrimage, grouped by a compelling +spiritual kinship. The artist and poet are wedded. Yet the artist never +loses his individuality, because the poet is so universal that he allows +the artist to read his private experience into his own. The picture may +not at first be so attractive as that of Stothard, but when one has grown +accustomed to the exterior charms of the two pictures, there still remains +in Blake's a rich field for fertile gleaning, while when the eye has +become satiated with Stothard's sweetness there remains nothing else as +food for the spirit. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE SUPREME VISION + + +Blake did well to be angry--so he believed. The years were slipping by, +and the gleams of light that had promised a glad day now seldom came. +Hayley had passed out of his life. Cromek could make the money out of him +that he could not make for himself. Stothard, he believed, had acted with +his eyes open. As he brooded on these things, anger and resentment took +possession of him. His courage was failing. His resentments secreted +poison that was surely spreading through his entire being and threatening +to turn the once overtrustful Blake into a disillusioned and bitter old +man. + +Then he turned to the gospel, not like tens of thousands to find comfort, +but to justify himself in his attitude of defiance, and to assure himself +that his anger was godlike. He fixed his eyes on to the figure of Jesus, +and essayed the difficult task of seeing Him as He was. + +There was not much help coming even from those contemporaries whom he +admired. + +Wesley and Whitefield proclaimed incessantly the death of Jesus as the one +availing sacrifice for sin, but they appeared to contemplate the life of +Jesus as little as the great Apostle of the Gentiles. William Law, in a +sweat of excitement at his finding of Boehme, devoted all his powers to +discovering the riches of the mystical indwelling Christ. + +Since Blake's day the higher critics have given their whole lives to +carving out a human Jesus from the mass of myth, legend, and tradition. +After this wholesale rejection of the supernatural, it strikes one as +comic to hear Samuel Butler solemnly assuring us that there are many gaps +in the character of Jesus that we may fill up, as we like, from our own +ideals. The old dilemma was, Either Jesus was divine or He was not good: +to-day it is, Either Jesus was falsely reported or He was mad. + +To the old orthodoxy Jesus was all gentleness, meekness, and mildness. To +the new heterodoxy He was afraid of reality and life, and in His manners +vehement, impatient, and rude. Some see in Him the pattern of obedience: +others the flaunter of all authority. + +Blake, as we saw, had reckoned himself among the rebels. He pitted the +future against the past. This was in his youth. Since then he had been +learning that the past held endless treasures, and now he was forced to +consider that it held Jesus. Rebellion must go beyond Jesus. Blake tried, +but he could not pass Him. He gazed at Him until he was seized by Him. +Passionately he contemplated Him. He perceived the energy and force of His +anger and wrath, which like lightning struck the strongholds of evil and +levelled them. He saw Him, His furious ire bursting forth until it became +a chariot of fire. Then driving His course throughout the land, cursing +the scribe and Pharisee, trampling down hypocrisy, breaking the Gates of +Death till they let in day, with bright scourge in hand scourging the +merchant Canaanite until: + + "With wrath He did subdue + The serpent bulk of Nature's dross + Till He had nailed it to the Cross." + + +[Illustration: THE PRAYER OF THE INFANT JESUS. + +_Reproduced by kind permission of Mr Sydney Morse._] + + +Here was what Blake wanted--an anger and fury only greater than his own. +He proceeded impatiently to tear to pieces the conventional Jesus. + +Was Jesus obedient, or gentle, or humble? There is no simple answer. His +life was dual--Godward and manward. To God He was obedient and humble: to +man disobedient and proud. His life cannot be explained in terms of law, +just because it was a life, and life is greater than law or logic. It was +no more possible for Him to keep the letter of the ten commandments than +for us. He set aside the Sabbath, He exposed His disciples to murder, He +turned the law from harlots, He lived a vagrant life on other people's +hard-won gains; He coveted the best gifts for His friends; He lived, not +by laws and rules, but by an all-compelling instinct and impulse. He +became in the eyes of His contemporaries a criminal only deserving of +capital punishment. + +Blake read on breathlessly. + +A woman, a sinner taken in the act, was brought to this terrible Jesus. +Instantly He became a lamb. With exquisite gentleness, sweetness, and +tact, He spoke words chosen not to wound or shame her, and then sent her +away forgiven and blest. This was no isolated event. His kindness to +outcasts never failed. He was angry with Pharisees, yet even to them +strangely without resentment. There was in Him a marvellously tender +compassion, united with a hot hatred of meanness and hypocrisy. All fierce +extremes met in Him. Here was what Blake had been seeking all his +life--that for which he had been a rebel. Just here, in the old gospel, +looming out of the past, he gained his supreme vision of One who satisfied +his utmost need. He gazed, and worshipped Him in His immense energy and +strength, His lowliness and meekness, Who had deserved all that His +chosen people could give Him, yet had borne no resentment when they +despised and rejected Him. Slowly Blake saw his life as a mere blot by the +side of that resplendent life. Then all resentment died in him. The child +spirit returned. He accepted his earthly lot, henceforth content to do his +work with all his might, careless whether his generation paid the wages +due to him or not. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH + + +Blake, like the Patriarch, wrestled through his dark night till the day +dawned. He had wrenched the secret out of the angel messenger. Henceforth +he was an Israelite indeed--a guileless Prince with God, with a word of +God on his lips for such as had ears to hear. Doubtless if we could +arrange the details of human experience we would decree that after such a +contact with the Divine a man should for the rest of his days sail on a +halcyon sea into a haven of rest. But though the giants are slain, their +ghosts return; and Blake, like Jacob, was still haunted by spectres which +only did not deter him because he had painfully learnt to discern between +the shadow and the substance. + +The day dawned, but not in the way that most would choose. Worldly success +was farther from him than ever. Instead of himself arising like a blaze of +light on the England that he loved, it was his spirit that was secretly +illumined by the spiritual sun; and while he could live by the memory of +his resplendent vision of Christ, yet as he moved among men he was merely +observed to halt on his thigh, or in other words to be touched with that +frenzy or madness which marks those who have rashly gazed on the sun. + +For the next ten years--years of rich spiritual maturity--Blake worked +incessantly; but his life was so obscure that his biographers have been +able to glean but a handful of facts. + +Immense changes were taking place in European literature and art. The new +spirit and the old spirit were energetically at work side by side. At +home, Jane Austen brought the novel as understood and treated by Fanny +Burney to consummate perfection. Sir Walter Scott cast a magic glow of +romance over the past. Wordsworth was piercing through the sacramental +significance of nature. Coleridge was dreaming weird mystical dreams in +the open daylight. Abroad, Goethe was exploring the riches of man's fallen +nature. Beethoven, bursting away from Haydn, was introducing a world of +passion into his music. Napoleon was a new kind of man. + +Did Blake read the signs of the times? And what did he think of them? We +know that he admired Wordsworth, but feared lest nature should ensnare +him. The rest is guess-work. Blake could hardly have known how to place +himself among the great moderns. It is we, looking back over the lapse of +a century, who can see his deep affinity with many that came after him. I +would say more. He had anticipated much of the better side of Nietzsche's +teaching, but had seen it still more clearly in the character and teaching +of Christ. He is strictly the Evangelist to the modern world enamoured of +art, strength, and spontaneity, to bring it back to Christ. + +Amidst these changes we can just discern a change in Blake's spiritual +life which is common to all original geniuses. The Psalmist sang: "Instead +of thy fathers thou shalt have children whom thou mayst make princes." +Blake had hardly had a father, but he had had friends or brothers that +were too apt to play the part of the heavy father. These were passing one +by one, and their places were being taken by young men, sons who sat at +the feet of the wise man and gave him the reverence that was his due. + +We cannot say that Blake had a genius for friendship. With none of his old +friends had he been really intimate. He was always uncompromising on his +convictions, and these were so peculiar that not even Swedenborgian +Flaxman could always understand him. His feeling for Flaxman survived with +difficulty. What might have grown to a close friendship for Hayley died +the moment he saw him as he was. Stothard had refused his offered hand +after their quarrel. There remained Fuseli, of whom he wrote: + + "The only man that e'er I knew + Who did not make me almost spew + Was Fuseli." + +Fuseli was a learned man who could scamper about the world's history with +breathless speed. He lectured on the different ages of art with all the +fluency of a Swiss polyglot waiter. Out of the copious flow of his +eloquence one can, with long patience, fish up such fine things as this on +Michael Angelo: "A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty," or +this on Rembrandt's Crucifixion: "Rembrandt concentrated the tremendous +moment in one flash of pallid light. It breaks on the body of Christ, +shivers down His limbs, and vanishes on the armour of a crucifix; the rest +is gloom." + +Fuseli had shared with Blake an admiration for Lavater. In an age of crude +scepticism he openly confessed his faith in Christ. With Blake he reckoned +outline the foundation of great art. Here was much on which the two men +could meet. But Fuseli never quite dug down to fundamental principles. + +He declared again and again that "our ideas are the offspring of our +senses," and Blake regarded such damnable Lockian heresy as rank atheism; +and among his other heresies, also damnable in Blake's eyes, was an +enthusiasm for Titian and Correggio, and a summary denial that Albert +Duerer was a man of genius. Hence, Fuseli and Blake, with regard for one +another, were never intimate friends. It was about the year 1818 that +Blake found himself in the midst of a new and younger circle. George +Cumberland, himself young and orthodox on outline, introduced him to John +Linnell and John Varley. + +John Varley moved from 2 Harris Place to 5 Broad Street, Golden Square, +about 1806. His house was shared with William Mulready, who married his +sister. His wife, Esther, was sister of John Gisborne, who moved in the +Shelley and Godwin set. Another sister married Copley Fielding. Here was a +group of artists connected by marriage. + +Varley helped to found the Water Colour Society in 1804, and drew to +himself many young men who were more or less his pupils. Among these, +besides Mulready, were W. H. Hunt, John Linnell, Samuel Palmer, James +Holmes. + +With the big, fat, genial Varley Blake soon became friends. Varley was a +typical once-born man, and his clean earthiness made its irresistible +appeal to the twice-born Blake with his head in the skies. Besides his +water-colours he pursued with equal ardour and success the study of +astrology. + +Minds of Blake's order have been apt to believe in astrology, like Jacob +Boehme and Paracelsus; but Varley failed to convert Blake because, no +doubt, of the extremely materialistic explanation that he could only give +of his science. The stars, according to the astrology that the Western +mind scoffs at, are supposed to exert a direct influence on the destinies +and characters of men. But there is an Oriental doctrine that dispenses +with such a crude theory, considering that the stars have no more direct +influence on character than the hands of a clock on time. Like all +mysticism, East and West, it regards the universe as the macrocosm and man +the microcosm. Between the two there is a correspondence, and therefore +the state of the microcosm can be read by the starry indications of the +macrocosm as the time can be known by the hands of an exact clock or +sundial. + +Varley understood nothing of all this, and so failed to convince Blake. +But he gave him what he needed far more, hearty good will and +unpatronizing faith and reverence. Blake could pursue his visions and +report on them, certain that his companion would believe in his marvels +with that perfect credulity which so many are ready to give who have +rejected the marvels of Christianity. At his bidding he evoked visions of +past worthies, and sketched them while they waited. From 1819 to, 1820 +Blake executed no less than fifty heads, including his famous _Ghost of a +Flea_. + +Those of us who were thrilled in our boyhood by the tales of Lord Lytton +like to know that Varley was consulted by him before writing his +fascinating _Zanoni_ and _Strange Story_. + +A still greater comfort and help to Blake was John Linnell. + +John Linnell began by copying George Morland, passed under the influence +of Sir Benjamin West, and then became a pupil of Varley, who sent him +straight to nature. Varley's brother Cornelius attended a baptist chapel, +and he induced Linnell to go with him and listen to the sermons of its +pastor, the Reverend John Martin. He was convicted of sin, converted, duly +immersed, and regularly enrolled. Henceforth religion of a puritanic kind +ruled his life, and made him easy to dissenters of the different sects, +but stiff and uncompromising towards the Church of England and the +clergy. At one time he had thoughts of joining the quakers, whose position +is far different from that of the baptists; but he was deterred by Bernard +Barton, who, though fond of art himself, warned him that the Friends as a +whole looked with extreme suspicion on anyone addicted to such a +questionable pursuit as that of making pictures. + +Blake was introduced to Linnell by George Cumberland in 1818 at Linnell's +house in Rathbone Place. They soon became intimate. Their religious +conception of art united them, and Linnell much relished Blake's tirades +against kings and priests. It was only when Blake spoke with equal licence +of the sex passion that Linnell felt an adverse tug at their friendship. + +Linnell took over for his country house Collins' Farm, North End, +Hampstead, and there Blake became a regular visitor on Sunday afternoons +until sickness and death put an end to his visits. + +North End, now in the County of London, is still a village on the Heath. +On Saturdays, Sundays, and Bank Holidays it is overlaid with trippers, +orange-peel, and paper bags. But no sooner do the holiday-makers return to +work than North End and its marvellous portion of heath resumes its +mystery, and the dreamer can dream undisturbed till the next people's +holiday. + +It is pleasant to think of Blake arriving at Collins' Farm, then after the +friendly greetings emerging by the Bull and Bush, sacred meeting-house of +many artists, crossing the road to Rotten Row, mounting the hillock and +viewing the fir-trees which still stand in all their mysterious beauty. If +only North End had been south instead of north! Blake declared with +seeming perverseness that the North upset his stomach. Varley would have +explained to him that his ruling sign being Leo, he required like all +lions the warm sunny south. + +Linnell introduced him to many of his young friends, who, catching the +infection, hailed Blake as a master and sat at his feet to learn. We note +this deference because it is what Blake so richly deserved; but even among +his new young friends there was nothing like complete discipleship. +Blake's art was an inseparable part of his whole passionate, chequered +spiritual life. No one whose inner life does not repeat the same broad +outlines can really approach near to him as an artist. James Holmes, with +his easy, superficial, courtly life, might teach Blake to brighten his +water-colours, but he was completely outside of his spiritual travail, and +could only wonder mildly why young idealists like Calvert, Palmer, and +Richmond could be so preoccupied with Blake's half-crazed thoughts. + +Even among those chosen three, there were no sons of thunder. + +Edward Calvert caught Blake's spirit in his lovely and simple woodcuts, +but quite rightly followed his own bent, which led him ultimately along a +different path from Blake's zigzag lightning tract. The master always +transpierced Nature, and lived in a transcendental region: Calvert, serene +and calm, detected the heart of the Divine beating equally in Nature, and +reproduced what he heard and saw in musical and sweet landscapes, where +storms never come, and which modern artists would probably prefer to see +disturbed by an earthquake. + +Samuel Palmer, with youthful impulse and generosity, gave himself to +Blake, and, rendered receptive by his love and enthusiasm, soon +assimilated all the master's principles. Palmer's rich nature allowed of +much reverence for Linnell too, and in his early work it is easy to find +examples first of Blake's influence and then of Linnell's. Like Calvert, +he was deeply and equably devout. He did not demand that austerity which +drew Linnell to the baptist, John Martin; nor that passion for which Blake +went to hell. The gentler elements of his soul led him away from harsh +sects to the more temperate Church of England, which can, among other +things, still nourish those souls that require the kind of diet that +George Herbert could provide so bountifully. + +We look with extreme interest to see how Blake's professed disciples set +about to unite their religion and art. They did it as many other Christian +artists have done it, as Fra Angelico did supremely well; yet they missed +Blake's daemonic energy, and so have failed to meet that demand of our own +age which will at all cost have passion for the driving force of religion +if it is to have religion at all. Samuel Palmer painted and etched some +exquisite pictures; but he was in after years gently apologetic for +Blake's _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, and he left the problem of the +synthesis of religion and art in the light of Christianity precisely where +it was left by the best Italian Christian artists. + +George Richmond completed the little inner circle of three disciples. He +was only sixteen when he met Blake at John Linnell's, North End, and then +walked with him back to Fountain Court, Strand, thrilling with a unique +impression as if he were verily walking with the prophet Isaiah. For a +while he was plastic clay in the hands of Blake, revealing the master's +influence in _Abel the Shepherd_ and _Christ and the Woman of Samaria_, +but like his friends, Calvert and Palmer, he had sufficient native energy +to follow his own instinct, and when he found himself in portrait painting +there is nothing to remind us even remotely of Blake. His sitters appear a +noble family. Cardinal Newman, Bishop Wilberforce, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs +Gaskell, and many others are extraordinarily beautiful, and might all be +taken for brothers and sisters. Richmond's religious feelings brought him +into fellowship with the tractarian movement, which of all recent +religious movements in England allows most standing-ground for one devoted +to religion and art. He did not paint Titans, but he puts us in love with +his beautiful family, and that surely is no mean achievement. + +Among Blake's friends must be mentioned Crabb Robinson and Frederick +Tatham, not because of their intrinsic importance to Blake, but their use +to us. Robinson was often sorely perplexed by the vehement paradoxes that +Blake wilfully poured into his ears; but at the same time, he thought it +worth while to jot them down in his diary. + +Tatham came near enough to Blake to enable him to fulfil several of the +indispensable qualifications of the biographer. Afterwards he became an +Irvingite, and, conscience-ridden, destroyed many of Blake's works that +had come into his hands because he reckoned them unsound. + +One other very curious friendship stands out, that with Thomas Griffiths +Wainewright. + +Wainewright was born out of due season. He might have avoided the +unpleasant and ugly things that befell him if he had been a contemporary +of the Borgias. He was an artist, and art is no respecter of persons. We +are tempted to say that art is fallen man's supreme consolation. It is +assuredly the meeting-place between a certain kind of saint and a certain +kind of sinner. The highest artist-saint, like Jesus Christ, appears to +create himself rather than works of art, and such always makes an +irresistible appeal to the artist-sinner, as we see that Christ did to +Oscar Wilde in his _De Profundis_ and to George Moore in his _Brook +Kerith_. The latter seems to be as far as the artist can reach without +religion, and it could teach most Christians something about their Master. +When Blake discovered that the Real Man in each one of us has imagination +for his chief and working faculty, he overcame once for all the provoking +dualism of art and religion, and at the same time he became an attraction +to those who live an imaginative life, especially among sinners. +Wainewright was drawn to Blake for precisely the same reason that many +modern enthusiasts are who could hardly be reckoned religious. He is +permanently interesting to the psychologist as to the artist, and hence he +could not escape the notice of Lord Lytton, who introduced him into his +_Lucretia_, and above all of Oscar Wilde, who darted upon him, and who, +with such a subject, was loosened to write in his most witty, brilliant, +and characteristic style. + +Here I must mention, in order, Blake's chief works from 1810 to the end. + +In 1793 was published a small book of engravings _For Children, The Gates +of Paradise_. Blake re-issued this in 1810, changing the _For Children_ to +_For the Sexes_. The changes do not throw fresh light on Blake. Rather, +what is important to know, we see, in spite of the changes, that Blake's +deepest thoughts were the same in 1795 and 1810. I will quote only the +first two lines: + + "Mutual Forgiveness of each vice, + Such are the Gates of Paradise." + +Forgiveness of sins, so impossible for the Pharisee, so easy for the +artist, is the heart of Christ's gospel. Blake leaned to that form of +Christianity which best understood forgiveness. At this time he was +inclined to think that the Church of Rome came nearest to Christ. + +Blake reprinted _The Prologue and Characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims_ in +1812. Then followed five years of indefatigable production, but the works +are lost for this world, though Blake would probably say that they were +published in the other, and read, and remembered. + +About 1817 he engraved leaflets, _Laocoon_, and _On Homer's Poetry_, and +_On Virgil_. + +The first is covered with small writing, fresh proverbs of hell, which are +the same in substance as the earlier proverbs, but less provocative. The +_Laocoon_ perfectly expressed his own experience during years of obscure +struggle. He found the same mighty conflict described from cover to cover +of the Bible. Christians have been accustomed to see there the history of +their sin, conviction, struggle, and victory. Blake had nothing to say +against all this, but he named that which was striving for the victory the +spirit of art, and all the things that accompany the conflict--prayer, +praise, fasting--he explained in terms of art. Protestantism had made +necessary such a vehement vindication of the beautiful. To-day, I suppose, +we accept naturally Blake's aphorisms, but need to rediscover some of +those other things that protestantism and catholicism alike have insisted +on so uncompromisingly in the past. + +From _On Homer's Poetry_ I quote the following: + +"Unity and Morality are secondary considerations and belong to Philosophy +and not to Poetry, to Exception and not to Rule, to Accident and not to +Substance. The Ancients called it eating of the Tree of Good and Evil." + +In other words, poetry, like life and love and other instinctive things, +goes deeper and before our fine-spun distinctions of number and morality. +Philosophers have sprung up since Blake's day who are wonderfully agreed +with him. + +This on the cause of European wars is striking: "The Classics! it is the +Classics, and not Goths nor Monks, that desolate Europe with Wars." + +From _On Virgil_ I gather this, which needs no comment: "A warlike State +never can produce Art. It will rob and plunder and accumulate into one +place, and translate and copy and buy and sell and criticize, but not +make." + +During Blake's last year in South Molton Street he executed seventeen +woodcuts for Dr Thornton's _Pastorals of Virgil_. These are very simple +and childlike or childish, according to our state when we look at Blake's +work. They seem to me of very unequal merit; but the best of them are +invaluable, for they show that Blake at the age of sixty-three had not +lost that childlike innocence, the parody of which is all that most men +attain to in their second childhood. + +In 1821 Blake removed to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, where he had the +plainest of neutral rooms, not without value as a background for his +visions. Here relief was at hand, but he knew it not. Harassed by poverty, +he must raise money somehow. His collection of engravings, which had +steadily grown since the day that he had endowed his bride with it as his +sole treasure, was marketable, and with as little fuss as need be he sold +it to Messrs Colnaghi and Company. It was the final self-stripping. +Humbled and disciplined by the inexorable years, having surrendered +himself and his last precious possession, he was ready to bring forth the +rich fruit of his mature genius. His old friend and patron Butts gave him +a commission to paint twenty-one water-colour designs illustrating the +Book of Job. He was allowed to show them, and they drew forth from his +friend Linnell a further commission to execute and engrave a duplicate +set, with the written agreement that he should receive L100 for the +designs and copyright and another L100 out of the profits. There were no +profits forthcoming; but Linnell paid him in instalments L50 besides the +first L100. We may note here that the Royal Academy in 1822 made him a +grant of L25. And so, at last, Blake had sufficient means to enable him to +devote himself to his joyous work without the gnawing distraction of +poverty and want. + +There is no book in the world better suited for Blake's genius than the +Book of Job. It has been in itself a complete Bible to the mystic in all +ages. In it is given a marvellous description in dramatic form of that +mysterious and awful self-stripping which the saint experiences after his +conversion and not before. It is an expansion of the text that even here +death is the gate of life. The same truth is insisted on by all the +prophets, especially by the prophets to the nations like Ezekiel and +Jonah; by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; by the +personal experience of St Paul; and recently by Hegel, till it has become +a commonplace both in religion and philosophy. + +Blake was troubled by no modern criticism of the Book of Job, which by +post-dating it several hundred years has robbed it of much of its literary +interest. To him it was the porch of the Sanctuary, the oldest book in the +Bible, at once the most ancient and most modern of books. Job, after his +dark night of testing and judgment, emerged simple and guileless, a +Patriarch who served God solely because that was the supremely right thing +to do. Who was Job? The Book gives no hint of his parentage. Who wrote +the wonderful prologue? Who could write it? Again the Book is silent. +Tradition says Moses; and if tradition speak truly, then several very +interesting things follow. Job was probably the son of Issachar,[6] and as +such went down with his father into Egypt when Joseph had been advanced in +that land. He would then remove to Uz in Chaldaea, carrying within +treasures of Egyptian learning. In later years, Moses, fleeing from Egypt +into the desert of Midian, would become his neighbour. Moses is admittedly +one of the world's greatest initiates. As such he could certainly have +written the prologue and the epilogue. And how lofty a level the drama +maintains throughout! Even Job's friends, who pour out pithy things in +rich poetical language surpassing that attained by all laureates, are +rebuked for uttering only what everybody knows. Yet so universal is the +Book in its symbolism that it can afford, if need be, to dispense with +picturesque details of its authorship and date, and stand simply on its +merits as an inspired dramatic epic of Man's passage from his +consciousness of degradation as a worm, and his stubbornness as a wild +ass's colt, to the dignity and power of a son of God. + +Blake had already traced the course of man's day of judgment in Night IX +of _The Four Zoas_, and had painted a fresco of the subject in 1820. In +the poem he had used his own peculiar mythology, and closed his poem to +nearly all readers. The Book of Job obliged him to drop his own symbolism +and use the simple and universal symbols that the drama itself supplies. A +brief reference to each design in order will make his purpose clear. + + +[Illustration: Then went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord] + + +_Design I._--Job and his wife and family, like true Israelites, are at +prayer under a spreading fig-tree. The shepherd sons have for the time +left their flocks at rest and hanged their musical instruments on the +tree. At first sight the picture presents a scene of idyllic peace. But +there are ominous signs. The sun is setting, night is fast coming, and the +fig-tree suggests the immemorial symbol of Israel's wrestling during the +dark night. + +_Design II._--An illustration of the prologue of the Book. It is a +marvellous representation of what an initiate only--a Moses, a +Blake--could have imagined of the cosmos, with its heavenly portion +peopled with the angelic sons of God in the middle, the earth and its +inhabitants below, and above and beyond all God in His Heaven. + +Satan, a magnificent figure, comes with the Sons of God to present himself +before God. In his fiery aura are two shadowy figures making with him a +trinity of evil. + +_Design III._--The crash of Job's family. He has built his house, and +prospered regardless of those who made it possible for him to build it; +and in the sudden turn of events it has become a mere ruin. + +_Design IV._--Job and his wife are under the fig-tree, the man bearing +with noble and unbroken fortitude the arrival of bad news. + +_Design V._--Once more the cosmos. Satan is rushing headlong towards earth +to wreak his full power on Job in the midst of his charities, yet +forbidden to touch the one thing that Job would so gladly surrender, his +life. Heaven cannot remain impassive at suffering on earth. Its sun is +darkened and the Almighty on His Throne is grieved at His heart. + +_Design VI._--Satan's last malice on Job. He is reduced to sheer nakedness +and wretchedness. Nothing of his former life that gave him comfort remains +to him. He is "wrecked on God." "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken +away, Blessed be the name of the Lord." With such faith and resignation +his sun has not quite set. + +_Design VII._--The friends arrive. Once more Blake felt at home from his +personal experience. He had never had beyond Catherine and Robert a +perfect spiritual friend. He had never lacked corporeal ones. The +remembrance of them gave zest and spirit to the portrayal of Eliphaz the +Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. + +_Design VIII._--Job's corporeal friends have done their worst. They and +his wife have quenched his last hope. His sun has gone down. Naked and +covered with boils from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he +lifts up both hands and curses the day that saw his birth. + +_Design IX._--The vision of Eliphaz, and his terror, for which Blake +recalled his own terror on the threshold. + +_Design X._--The corporeal friends stripped of their wordy disguise. They +are spiritual enemies that point the finger of scorn at the just, upright +man. There is a glimmer of light on the horizon, for Job can still say, +"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." + +_Design XI._--A worse stage of misery. Hitherto Job had held fast his +faith in God. Now he no longer sees God as He is. In the terrors of his +dreams and visions he cannot discern between God and Satan. Satan +stretches over him with a face reminiscent of God's. As Job turns away his +head in horror, it becomes impossible for him to detect the cloven hoof; +and so he touches that horror of great darkness, worse than all +physical suffering, where not only man but God has turned His face, and in +Its place loom the commandments of stone, which recall the darkness and +thunders of Sinai. + + +[Illustration: When the morning Stars sang together, & all the Sons of God +shouted for joy] + + +_Design XII._--The horror of darkness has passed. The stars are shining, +and the youthful Elihu essays to utter the wisdom that the old men have +lacked. Blake could recall the ministry of his young friends, who had come +so recently into his life, and by their love had caused the stars to +appear. Elihu does not utter perfect wisdom, for that cannot be reached +from human experience. + +_Design XIII._--The source of perfect wisdom. "The Lord answered Job out +of the Whirlwind." Job sees Him as He is in His true lineaments, and +listens as the Almighty speaks. Blake, too, reads breathlessly the +marvellous description of creation till his spirit flames up, and the +creative fire gives birth to his next most glorious design. + +_Design XIV._--The creation and the immense joy of it. There is the +creation of the whole cosmos, when the morning Stars sang together, and +all the Sons of God shouted for joy. Never was such joy again till the +beginning of the New Creation, when the Son of God was born in Bethlehem, +as Luke, artist and saint, narrates with such artless simplicity and +beauty. The Scriptures assure us of a time when that joy shall be eternal. +Meanwhile it is the artists who in true creation have a foretaste of the +joy. It is Blake who has presented it in its most spiritual and universal +aspect. + +_Design XV._--A grotesque. I presume that Blake, like Leonardo da Vinci, +discovered something grotesque as he explored the universe. + +_Design XVI._--The universe once more. It is the consummation of the +judgment. Satan and his shadowy companions who dwell in man have taken +definite form and substance. The man who has walked the way of excess has +brought all his latent evil out, and has given it substance, so that he +can arise in his strength and cast it out for ever. + +_Design XVII._--Job's beatific vision. He is blessed and his house, now +only his wife, but through her and God's blessing he may be fruitful and +multiply, and build his house in the divine order. His sun has risen and +will no more set. + +_Design XVIII._--Job stands before an altar of burnt-offering. Like Jacob +he has prevailed, and God accepts him and his prayers for his friends. + +_Design XIX._--Job and his wife once more under the fig-tree, whose fruit +has ripened. He is the recipient of friendly gifts and offerings from his +neighbours. + +_Design XX._--Job, with memories engraven on the chambers of his imagery, +stretching forth his hands over his new family of beautiful daughters. + +_Design XXI._--A return to the first scene. But the sun is rising, and Job +and his family, taking their instruments of art, are worshipping God in +the beauty of holiness. + +Blake completed his engravings for Job in March 1825, and they were +published March 1826. + +They might well have been the crowning work of his life, and followed by +his _Nunc dimittis_, but there was boundless mental energy in the old man, +though his body was failing. + + +[Illustration: FROM THE DANTE SERIES.] + + +It was in 1825 that Blake met Crabb Robinson at the house of Mr Aders, +where Mrs Aders, daughter of Raphael Smith, was in the habit of +entertaining many interesting people. + +Crabb Robinson was a most excellent man--well accoutred, steady on his +legs, with well-set head, without superstition, and just enough prejudice +to starch his mind. + +He knew Blake at the time that he was learning Italian for the sake of +Dante that he might execute Dante designs for Linnell. From Robinson's +reminiscences, we do just get a glimpse of Blake struggling with Dante, +and delighting to mystify his respectable friend. Unfortunately, the +reported references in their conversations to Dante are few, though enough +perhaps to indicate Blake's attitude. He was not one of Dante's elect. But +with closer study he was beginning to fall under his spell, and we may +safely surmise that if Dante had come into Blake's life in his youth, +instead of Swedenborg, Blake would have become the greatest catholic +mystic artist of the age. + +Little more remains to be told. + +Blake in great pain of body--stomach trouble and shivering fits--was +driven to his bed. When he knew the end was near, he said to his wife: "I +have no grief but in leaving you, Catherine. We have lived happy, 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 endeavoured to live as +Christ commanded, and I have sought to worship God truly in my own home, +when I was not seen of men." + +While the wife ministered to him he exclaimed suddenly, "You have ever +been an angel to me, I will draw you." And he did. In answer to her, he +expressed a wish to be buried at Bunhill Fields by the Church of England. + +At midday on August 12th, 1827, he burst into strong joyous song, and then +corrected his previous word about parting by assuring Catherine that he +would always be there to take care of her. Then he remained quite quiet +till his spirit passed away. + + + + +EPILOGUE + + +Life is a voyage of discovery or rediscovery. Those, like Blake, born in a +Christian land make the same voyage. The Christian tradition is handed on +to us in our tender infancy, and most people take what their immediate +teachers tell them, and live on that dry stock for the rest of their days. +But the sinner and the genius, like Blake, early throw their inheritance +overboard, and driven by native energy go in adventurous quest of new +lands. The first half of Blake's life was spent thus. He would rebel at +all costs, he would above all protest against what he hated--the religion +of repression. + +For many years Christianity and repression were for him synonymous terms. +His craving was for expression. Parents, teachers, priests, kings, +governments, were enemies to spontaneous self-expression. Then they must +go. His youthful exuberance admitted of no half-measures. Like Ezekiel and +Christ, he poured out his invective against hireling shepherds: unlike +them, he ceased for a time to believe in good shepherds. One and all they +were out to repress men's instincts and passions, until, driven in, the +pent-up passion poisoned their whole nature, or in the weaker sort was +rendered passive. Blake proclaimed his doctrine with vehemence, but no one +regarded him. + +Pursuing this course for many years, he perceived some wonderful things. +Art is expression; and he made an application of all the glories of art to +human character. Teach men to express themselves, and then instead of +their being as dull and similar as a flock of sheep governed by the herd +instinct, they would grow into a beautiful variety. Man would create +himself as an artist creates his works. The same law governed both. +Repression when successful induced a nerveless, sapless type. Man became +an overwhipped dog. Expression produced a strong, beautiful character +above all petty and tiresome rules of conduct. The conduct of such is +carelessly right. + +It was by Blake's frank proclamation of the _ego_ that he anticipated so +much of what the modern apostles of the superman have made us all familiar +with. From Ibsen's _Doll's House_ to Nietzsche's _Thus spake Zarathustra_, +confidence in the _ego_ has been proclaimed as the means to liberty, +beauty, and sovereignty; and this has been accompanied by revivals on a +large scale of those ancient mystery religions that turn on the culture of +the divine _ego_. + +This was a road of excess which Blake pursued as far as an individual +might. In the nineteenth century the law of the _ego_, the struggle for +life, the survival of the fittest, brute force, were regarded as all one, +and transferred from the individual to the State, till in a few years the +world was plunged into war. + +Blake's voyage of rediscovery began during the Reign of Terror. The new +teachers, like Swedenborg and Godwin, Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, +failed to satisfy his own craving for expression. The Reign of Terror +appalled him when it showed him his principle at work in the proletariat. +Then it was that turning again to the Evangelists he made the wonderful +discovery, which later apostles of the _ego_ have not made, that Jesus +Christ was the perfect example and embodiment of his vision. He had +pictured to himself a man, impelled by a creative passion, whose +character in every part should be manifestly the outcome of fiery energy. +And there was the Man in the Subject of the Gospels. But he saw that Jesus +Christ could not be labelled or classed. There was egoistic +self-expression in Him, and there was self-renunciation. Somehow He had +altogether escaped the modern dilemma of self-expression or +self-sacrifice. Both were magnificently present in Him and united, because +His self-expression was resting on His self-surrender to God. Give up God, +and man swings perpetually between duty to neighbour and duty to self. +Believe in and surrender to God, and each falls into its proper place. +This was not the only synthesis in the character of Jesus. He was a union +of all possible contraries. Gentleness and fierceness; non-resistance and +aggressive force; non-resentment and fiery invective; forgiveness and +severe justice, haughty pride and lowliness; self-confidence and utter +dependence upon God, all were in Jesus. Henceforth Blake could keep his +vision of Jesus and his vision of art, for they were one. + +The next stage in rediscovery was to find out what the great body of +dogmatic truth had affirmed about Jesus down the Christian centuries. Here +he made little progress. He probably felt, as we all do at times, that the +simplicity of the gospel was lost in the maze of dogmatic subtleties. The +negative aspect of dogma, that it rules out all that would infringe on +that simplicity, never occurred to him. His mind was governed and +distracted by Hindoo pantheism, and catholic anthropomorphism filtered and +diluted through Swedenborg. Even after he had repudiated Swedenborg the +distraction remained. His new understanding of Christ taught him that he +must accept the ultimate antinomy of good and evil, and that therefore +Christ's heaven and hell must remain; but the pantheism never abated its +watery flood, and the emphatic catholic teaching of transcendence and +immanence gained no sufficient hold to deliver his mind. + +The truth is that Blake was not a great thinker, still less a +system-builder. He ought to have found the best Christian system while +young and kept to it. Then he could have lived his life of vision within +coherent bounds. Clear, sharp dogma, like outline in art, would have given +rest to his mind, substance to his visions, and saved him from the waste +of pouring out a torrent of incoherent sayings containing scraps of +gnosticism, theosophy, rosicrucianism, and almost every heresy under the +sun. + +The master-mind in his youth who could have given him a sound system was +Dr Johnson, and he would not listen to him. How should the arch-rebel pay +any attention to the arch-conservator? Dr Johnson said many foolish things +about things of no great importance: he was wise in great matters. An +ounce of folly, like a dead fly in the ointment, suffices to put off the +fastidious rebel, who will seize hold of any excuse. Eventually Blake +subscribed to the same creed as Dr Johnson. That surely is a marvellous +unanimity for such diverse minds. + +The master-mind in his age who could have given him a better system than +his own, and to whom he was beginning to listen, was Dante. His +catholicism may have been of a medieval pattern, but it was very little +infected with the time-spirit; it is even now finer than Swedenborg's +fabrication, and modern compared with the gnosticism that bulked so +largely in Blake's mind. + +Blake makes no disciples, and no school can claim him, but he speaks to +all who have any mental equipment. His vision of Christ, if we can make it +our own and fill out its defects, will put us beyond the modern worship +of the superman, and take us out of that sectarianism which gains +ascendancy for a little while because of its lightness and +fragmentariness. + +The confusion in Blake's mental life affects his art. He declared +consistently in times of clear vision that outline, form, and foundation +are the essence of spiritual things. This is beyond anything to be found +in Sir Joshua's _Discourses_, and anticipates Benedetto Croce when he says +that art is an ultimate, that "form is constant and is spiritual +activity," while "matter is changeable," yet he accomplished many designs +that Reynolds could have taught him to correct. + +His later poems suffer still more. The energy in them is terrific, and +they are filled with flashes of inspiration; but their atmosphere is +murky, and never clears for more than fifty lines at a time. They are +storehouses, but the one who would get anything out of them must bring his +taper with him. + +The early short poems, on the contrary, shine with their own light. _The +Tiger_ and _The Emmet_ are written before his mind has time to plunge into +the penumbra of his disorderly system. + +Blake was still young in spirit when he died. One feels with him, as with +Tolstoi, that he had far from come to the end of his tether. He was one of +the few to whose years another threescore might have been added with +advantage. Where would he have arrived? I think when we remember that for +more than twenty years before his death he was on the voyage of +rediscovery, we may hazard the guess that he would have reached the +catholic form of Christianity, having thrown overboard his private +symbolism on the way; and that then he would have produced great, long +poems of crystalline clearness, which would have placed him by the side of +the master-poets of the ages. + +Yet it is idle work guessing at what might have been. We blame a man's +times, or birth, or church, or what not for his failures, when we should +look for some fundamental lack in his own equipment. That Blake was not +quite one of our conquerors, then, we will not attribute to the eighteenth +century or to Swedenborg's predominant influence in his early life, but +simply to the fact that he lacked the strong, virile reason that could +keep pace with the on-rush of his visions. He was all Los: Urizen, whom he +repudiated with such scorn, alone could have balanced his nature and led +him to the supreme achievement. + + + + +INDEX + + + _Abel the Shepherd_, 176 + + Abstract Philosophy, 109 + + _Adam and Eve observed by Satan_, 123 + + Aders, Mr and Mrs, 187 + + _Age of Reason_, 87, 93 + + Ahania, 111 + + Akashic Records, 132 + + Albion, 149-50 + + _America: A Prophecy_, 96-7, 98 + + American Independence, War of, 86, 87, 98 + + _Ancient of Days_, 101 + + _Angelic Wisdom_, 58 + + Angelico, Fra, 176 + + Arblay, M. d', 85 + + Asia, 109 + + Astrology, 172-3 + + Augustine, St, 152 + + Austen, Jane, 170 + + + Barbauld, Mrs, 30 + + Bartolozzi, 17, 123, 154 + + Barton, Bernard, 174 + + _Bas Bleu_, 28 + + Basire, 17, 18 + + Bastille, the, 89, 90, 92 + + Bath, Lord, 29 + + Beaumont and Fletcher, 33 + + Beethoven, 170 + + Bible, the, 122, 133 + + Bildad, 184 + + Blair's _Grave_, 154-9 + + Blake, Catherine, 30, 31, 37, 38, 40, 66, 148 + + Blake, James (Sen.), 12, 39 + + Blake, James (Jun.), 39 + + Blake, Robert, 14, 39, 40, 45 + + Blake, William, born, 11; + baptized, 12; + vision at Peckham Rye, 13; + books read, 14; + learns drawing from Mr Pars, 15; + apprenticed to Basire, 17; + joins the Academy under Moser, 21; + designs _Morning_, or _Glad Day_, 22; + falls in love with Polly Wood, 23; + marries Catherine Boucher, 24; + meets Flaxman, 30; + goes to Mrs Mathew's parties, 30; + on war, 34-5; + lodges at 23 Green Street, 37; + moves to 27 Broad Street, 39; + nurses Robert, 40; + moves to 28 Poland Street, 40; + engraves after Stothard, 44; + Robert imparts method of engraving, 45; + comments on Lavater's Aphorisms, 51; + and Swedenborg, 55-80; + reads and annotates _Angelic Wisdom_, 62-5; + subscribes his name to tenets of the New Church, 66; + on Swedenborg, 72; + takes leave of Swedenborg, 80; + among the rebels, 89; + wears the _bonnet rouge_, 89; + on sex, 94-6; + moves to 13 Hercules Buildings, 98; + engraves _Europe: A Prophecy_, 99, 101; + illustrates Buerger's _Lenore_, 111; + goes to Felpham, 117; + paints miniatures, 119-21; + learns Greek from Hayley, 121; + returns to London, 127; + South Molton Street, 127; + vision clears after visit to Truchsess gallery, 129; + and Sir J. Reynolds, 156-9; + writes descriptive catalogue, 161; + and Chaucer, 162-3; + vision of Jesus Christ, 165-8; + new friends, 172; + and Varley, 172-3; + removes to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, 180; + sells his collection of engravings, 180; + and Book of Job, 182-86; + and Dante, 187; + illness, 187; + death, 188 + + Blue-stockings, the, 26-36 + + Boehme, Jacob, 23, 47, 49, 51, 56, 58, 72, 118, 165, 172 + + Bond Street, 21 + + _Book for a Rainy Day_, 30 + + _Book of Ahania_, 110 + + _Book of Job_, 181-2 + + _Book of Los_, 110 + + _Book of Urizen_, 106 + + Boucher, Catherine, 24 + + Bourdon, 129 + + Bousset, 61 + + Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, 123 + + Brahma, 109 + + Bray, Mrs, 160, 162 + + Breughel, 129 + + Bronte, Charlotte, 177 + + _Brook Kerith_, 178 + + Brooke, Mrs, 30 + + Bull and Bush, North End, Hampstead, 174 + + Bunyan, John, 140 + + Buerger, 111, 112 + + Burke, Edmund, 85, 89 + + Burney, Dr, 29 + + Burney, Fanny, 28, 42, 85, 86, 170 + + Butler, Samuel, 166 + + Butts, Thomas, 121, 124, 125, 127, 132 + + + Calvert, Edward, 175, 176 + + _Candide_, 28 + + Caracci, 126 + + Carter, Mrs, 26, 27, 28, 30 + + _Castle of Otranto_, 34 + + Catherine of Siena, St, 53, 133 + + Chapone, Mrs, 30, 31 + + Chatterton, 14 + + Chaucer, 161, 162, 163 + + Chaucer's _Canterbury Pilgrims_, 159 + + Chesterfield, Lord, _Letters to his Son_, 27 + + Christ, 152 + + _Christ and the Woman of Samaria_, 176 + + _Clod, the_, 104 + + Coleridge, S. T., 82, 170 + + Collins' Farm, North End, Hampstead, 174 + + Correggio, 126, 172 + + Cosmos, the, 134, 147, 183, 185 + + Cowper, W., 82, 116, 123, 124, 130 + + _Cowper, Life of_, 130 + + _Crime and Punishment_, 98 + + Croce, Benedetto, 193 + + Cromek, Robert Hartley, 154-6, 159, 160, 165 + + Cumberland, George, 172 + + + Dante, 73, 114, 133, 187, 192 + + Deism, 144-5 + + _De Profundis_, 178 + + Designs for Job, 183-6 + + _Dialogues of the Dead_, 26 + + Dogma, 192 + + Dostoieffski, 98 + + Dualism, 143 + + Duerer, Albert, 16, 17, 41, 42, 129, 172 + + + _Earl Godwin_, 42 + + Ego-theism, 71 + + Elihu, 185 + + _Elinor_, 112 + + Eliot, George, 112 + + Eliphaz, 184 + + Elizabethan age, 16 + + _Emmet, the_, 193 + + Engleheart, 160 + + Enitharmon, 99, 100, 108 + + Eno, 111 + + _Enquiry concerning Political Justice_, 82 + + _Epipsychidion_, 95 + + _Essay on Old Maids_, 121 + + Essenes, the, 61 + + Europe, 109 + + _Europe: A Prophecy_, 99-101 + + _Evelina_, 42 + + Ezekiel, 137, 144, 181, 189 + + Ezra, 118 + + + _Fair Elinor_, 34 + + Felpham, 117, 119, 125, 126 + + Fenelon, 50, 53 + + Fielding, Copley, 172 + + Fingal, 14 + + Flaxman, 22, 24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 159, 160, + 171 + + Flaxman, Maria, 114 + + Flemish _picturesque_, 125 + + Florentine School of Art, 16 + + Fludd, 23 + + Foote, Samuel, 49 + + Fordyce, Dr, 85 + + France, 109 + + Francis of Assisi, St, 45 + + Franklin, 96 + + French Revolution, 85, 87, 89, 90-2, 101, 118 + + Fuseli, 24, 81, 171-2 + + Fuzon, 110, 111 + + + Garrick, 115 + + Gaskell, Mrs, 177 + + _Gates of Paradise_, 178 + + Genlis, Madame de, 86 + + _Ghost of a Flea_, 173 + + Gibbon, Edward, 115 + + Gilchrist, 45 + + _Glad Day_, 42 + + Gnosticism, 134 + + Godwin, W., 82-4, 86, 87, 88, 92, 145, 172, 190 + + Goethe, 30, 36, 54, 170 + + Goldsmith, Oliver, 18 + + Gordon, Lord George, 23 + + Gothic architecture, 17 + + Grand Style, 125 + + Gregory, Dr, 85 + + Guyon, Madame, 23, 47, 50 + + _Gwen, King of Norway_, 34 + + + Habakkuk, 129 + + Halls of Los, 122 + + Hamilton, 42 + + Hardy, 88 + + Harlow, 160 + + Haydn, 170 + + Hayley, William, 114-130, 137, 139-42, 153-4, 165, 171 + + _Head of Romney_, 153 + + Heath, James, 160 + + Heaven and Hell, 78 + + Hegel, 181 + + Hell, 57 + + Hemskerck, Martin, 16 + + Herbert, George, 176 + + Hervey, 49, 50 + + Hesketh, Lady, 116 + + Highland Society, 14 + + Hogarth, 42, 43, 158 + + Holbein, Hans, 129 + + Holcroft, 88 + + Holmes, James, 172, 175 + + Hoppner, 162 + + _How sweet I roam'd_, 16, 33 + + Hume, 36 + + Hunt, W. H., 172 + + + Ibsen, 190 + + Imagination, 122, 125 + + Imlay, Charles, 86 + + Immanence, 192 + + Inspiration, 122, 132, 133 + + Isaiah, 118 + + + Jacob, 169 + + Jefferson, 87 + + _Jerusalem_, 113, 131, 132, 142, 149, 151 + + Jesus Christ, 165-8, 189, 190-1 + + Job, Book of, 76 + + John, Saint, 152 + + Johnson, bookseller, 22, 81, 82, 86, 90, 123 + + Johnson, Dr, 20, 27, 28, 36, 47, 48, 145, 192 + + Johnson, Rev. John, 119, 122 + + Jonah, 181 + + Jonson, Ben, 14, 16, 31, 33 + + _Joseph of Arimathea_, 18 + + Juniper Hall, 85 + + + Kaufmann, Angelica, 17 + + Keim, 61 + + _King Edward the Third_, 33 + + _King Edward and Queen Elinor_, 42 + + Klopstock's _Messiah_, 122 + + + Landseer, 161 + + _Laocoon_, 179 + + Lavater, 50-4, 171 + + Law, William, 48, 165 + + Le Brun, 21 + + _Lenore_, Buerger's, 111 + + Linnell, John, 172, 173-5, 181 + + _Little Girl Found_, 103 + + _Little Girl Lost_, 103 + + _Little Tom the Sailor_, 119 + + Locke, John, 109 + + London, Bishop of, 29 + + Los, 75, 107, 108, 109, 139, 144, 194 + + Luke, St, 185 + + Luvah, 144 + + Lyca, 104 + + Lyttelton, Lord, 26, 29 + + Lytton, Bulwer, 82, 173, 178 + + + Mackintosh, 89 + + Macpherson, 14, 15, 42 + + _Mad Song_, 33 + + Maimonides, 54 + + _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, 75, 81, 176 + + Martin, Rev. John, 173, 176 + + Mathew, Mrs, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 39, 44, 119 + + Mathew, Rev. Henry, 29, 30, 32 + + Memory, 122, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 147 + + Mendelssohn, Moses, 54 + + Meyer, 115 + + Michael Angelo, 16, 17, 18, 21, 42, 44, 117, 126, 129, 139, 157, 158, 171 + + Milton, John, 44, 76, 105, 118, 123-4, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 151 + + _Milton_, 122, 124, 131, 132, 137-142, 152 + + Miniature Painting, 119, 120, 121, 125 + + Montagu, Mrs, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 35 + + Moore, George, 61, 178 + + More, Hannah, 28, 115 + + Morland, George, 173 + + _Morning_, or _Glad Day_, 22 + + Morris, Mr, 71 + + Mortimer, 42 + + Moses, 182, 183 + + Mulgrave, Lord, 29 + + Mulready, W., 172 + + Muses, the, 122 + + _My Silks and Fine Array_, 33 + + _Mysterious Mother_, 34 + + Mysticism, German, 68 + + + Napoleon, 170 + + Narbonne, M. de, 85 + + Nature, 13, 125, 146, 149 + + _Nelly O'Brien_, 158 + + Newman, Cardinal, 176 + + Newton, Sir Isaac, 109 + + Nietzsche, 54, 133, 139, 140, 170, 190 + + _Night Thoughts_, Young's, 112 + + No Popery Riots, 23 + + North American States, 44 + + North End, Hampstead, 174, 176 + + + Odin, 109 + + _On Homer's Poetry_, 179 + + _On Virgil_, 179, 180 + + Oothoon, 94-5 + + Opie, Mrs, 115 + + Oram, 30 + + Orc, 99, 100, 109, 110 + + Ord, Mrs, 28 + + _Ossian_, 14 + + Ossian, 105 + + + Paine, Tom, 82, 86-8, 89, 93, 96, 98, 144, 145, 190 + + Palamabron, 109 + + Palmer, Samuel, 172, 175-6 + + Pantheism, 71, 72, 106, 107, 143 + + Pantheism, Hindoo, 191 + + Paracelsus, 23, 47, 58, 118, 172 + + _Paradise Lost_, 136 + + Parker, 39, 40 + + Pars, Mr, 15 + + Pascal, 28 + + Passion, 76, 77, 147-8 + + _Pastorals of Virgil_, 180 + + Paul, St, 134, 135, 140, 146, 181 + + Paulus, Dr, 61 + + _Pebble, the_, 154 + + _Penance of Jane Shore_, 42 + + Pepys, Sir Lucas, 29 + + Percy's _Reliques_, 14 + + Phillips, Captain, 29 + + Pilgrimage to Canterbury, 160-1 + + Piozzi, Mrs, 84 + + Plato, 109, 149, 152 + + _Poetical Sketches_, 33, 44 + + _Poison Tree_, 104 + + Pope, A., 114 + + Portland, Duchess of, 26 + + Price, Dr, 82 + + Priestley, Dr, 82, 87, 93 + + Proverbs of Hell, 76 + + Pythagoras, 109 + + + Quakers, 174 + + Quintilian, 28 + + + Radcliffe, Mrs, 34 + + Raphael, 16, 21, 42, 126, 157 + + Reign of Terror, 89, 100, 102, 117, 190 + + Rembrandt, 42, 158, 171 + + Renan, 61 + + Repression, 189-90, 191 + + Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 118, 126, 156-9, 193 + + Reynolds' _Discourses_, 157-8, 193 + + Richmond, George, 176-7 + + _Rights of Man_, 88 + + Rintrah, 109 + + Ritson's _English Songs_, 44 + + Robinson, Crabb, 161, 177, 187 + + Romano, Julio, 16 + + Romney, 115, 116, 118, 119, 123, 124, 130 + + _Romney, Life of_, 130 + + Rose, Samuel, 127 + + Rotten Row, Hampstead, 174 + + Rousseau, 28, 36, 109, 145 + + Rowley, 14 + + Royal Academy, 21, 25 + + Rubens, 21, 42 + + + Samson, Dr, 99 + + Satan, 76, 139, 183, 184, 186 + + Schiavonetti, Lewis, 155, 160 + + Schiavonetti, Niccolo, 160 + + _Schoolboy, the_, 104 + + Schweitzer, 61 + + Scott, Sir W., 14, 170 + + Seven Planes, 134 + + Seward, Anna, 115 + + Sex, 147-8 + + Shakespeare, 14, 26, 27, 33, 44, 76, 118, 132, 133 + + Sharpe, 123 + + Shelley, 71, 84, 95, 133, 172 + + Shields, F., 112 + + _Shipwreck_, after Romney, 130, 153 + + Skofield, 127 + + Smelt, Mr, 29 + + Smith, J. T., 30, 39 + + Socrates, 109 + + _Song of Liberty_, 93 + + _Song of Los_, 108 + + _Songs of Experience_, 70 + + _Songs of Innocence_, 69, 102, 103 + + Sotho, 109 + + Spencer, 31 + + Spencer's _Faery Queen_, 14 + + Stael, Madame de, 86 + + Stothard, 22, 24, 44, 112, 114, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 171 + + _Strange Story_, 173 + + Strauss, 61 + + Swedenborg, 30, 39, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55-80, 58, 59, 105, 110, 118, 137, + 138, 143, 160, 187, 190, 191, 192, 194 + + Swinburne, 14, 33, 53 + + Symbolism, 136 + + + Tabard Inn, 162 + + Talleyrand, 85 + + Tatham, F., 177 + + Tharmas, 144 + + _The Divine Image_, 69 + + _The Little Vagabond_, 71 + + _Thel_, 66-9 + + Thelwall, 86 + + Theosophy, 134 + + Theotormon, 94-5 + + Theresa, St, 23, 47, 50 + + Thomson, 14 + + Thornton, Dr, 180 + + _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, 190 + + _Tiger, the_, 193 + + Tiriel, 66, 67 + + Titian, 42, 172 + + Tolstoi, 193 + + Tooke, Horne, 86 + + Townshend, Charles, 87 + + Transcendence, 192 + + Trismegistus, 109 + + _Triumphs of Temper_, 114, 115, 121 + + Truchsess, Count, 129 + + + Urizen, 66, 67, 75, 93, 99, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 139, 142, 144, 194 + + + Varley, Cornelius, 173 + + Varley, John, 172-3, 174 + + Venetian art, 117 + + Venetian _finesse_, 125 + + Vesey, Mrs, 28 + + Vinci, Leonardo da, 129, 185 + + _Visions of the Daughters of Albion_, 94-5, 97 + + Voltaire, 28, 36, 109, 145 + + + Wainewright, T. G., 177-8 + + Walpole, Horace, 26, 28, 34, 85 + + War, 34, 35, 43, 44 + + Warren, 96 + + Washington, 96 + + Water Colour Society, 172 + + Watson, Caroline, 130 + + Watteau, 129 + + Webster, 33 + + _Werther_, 28 + + Wesley, John, 23, 48, 49, 50, 66, 139, 140, 165 + + West, Sir Benjamin, 173 + + Whitefield, 23, 49, 50, 66, 139, 140, 145, 165 + + Wilberforce, 177 + + Wilde, Oscar, 178 + + Wilkinson, Garth, 53, 68, 71, 72 + + Wollstonecraft, Mary, 82, 84-6, 88, 89, 92, 190 + + Wood, Polly, 23 + + Woollett, 17, 18 + + Wordsworth, 13, 170 + + + Yeats, W. B., 112, 132 + + Young, Edward, 112 + + + _Zanoni_, 173 + + _Zoas, the Four_, 113, 124, 131, 142, 145, 182 + + Zophar, 184 + + + + +_Printed in Great Britain by_ + +UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED + +WOKING AND LONDON + + + + +Footnotes: + +[1] This fact was first pointed out by Mr Laurence Binyon. + +[2] _Jerusalem_, 72. 50-52. + +[3] Prov. viii. 27-31. + +[4] _Jerusalem_, 15. 61-69. + +[5] Thirteenth Discourse. + +[6] Genesis xlvi. 13. + + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. + +Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors +have been silently closed while those requiring interpretation have +been left open. + +The following misprints have been corrected: + "no" corrected to "not" (page 42) + "correponds" corrected to "corresponds" (page 56) + "Hesbeth" corrected to "Hesketh" (page 116) + +Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling, +hyphenation, and period usage after abbreviations have been retained +from the original. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of William Blake, by Charles Gardner + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM BLAKE *** + +***** This file should be named 34596.txt or 34596.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/5/9/34596/ + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian +Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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