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diff --git a/37407-8.txt b/37407-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..077cd79 --- /dev/null +++ b/37407-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7276 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Blake, by Irene Langridge + +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 + A Study of His Life and Art Work + +Author: Irene Langridge + +Release Date: September 12, 2011 [EBook #37407] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** 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 + + + + +[Illustration: FROM BLAIR'S "GRAVE": THE LAST JUDGMENT + +Engraved by L. Schiavonetti after Blake's design. 1808] + + + + + WILLIAM BLAKE + + A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND ART WORK + + + BY IRENE LANGRIDGE + + + LONDON + GEORGE BELL AND SONS + 1904 + + + + + CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. + TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. + + + + +PREFACE + + +Some years ago, I became deeply interested in William Blake, and made +myself familiar with all that our public collections in London contain of +his art-work. It seemed to me that this work was still so little known and +appreciated by the public, that a short book might well be written to +serve as a pointer to our national Blake treasures. The standard works on +Blake--Gilchrist's Life, Mr. A. C. Swinburne's Critical Essay, Messrs. +Ellis and Yeats' exhaustive volumes, and Mr. W. M. Rossetti's Aldine +Essay--are of great literary excellence and high critical quality, and +must ever remain the great authorities on the subject; but, owing to these +works being either out of print, very lengthy, very expensive, or +unillustrated, a want may be supplied by, and an opportunity of usefulness +open to, such a book as the present one. Different in scope as it is from +any other book on Blake, and modest in aim, it deals with the poet-artist +as he is manifested in those works of his which are accessible to the +public. + +In seeking to sketch again his artistic personality, I have been guided by +the conclusions of his eminent biographers and critics wherever they +coincided with my own intuitive convictions. But in the study of a +character and work so out of the usual, so exotic and strange as those of +Blake, unanimity of opinion and judgement is hardly to be hoped for, and +the variety of points of view from which each new student sees him, may +assist to the rounding and filling out of the portrait drawn in so +masterly a manner in the first instance by Alexander Gilchrist. + +My best thanks are due to Mr. A. B. Langridge for reading my proofs and +for the photographs which he took expressly to illustrate this volume. +Also to Mr. Frederic Shields for numerous acts of kindness and the loan of +original Blake drawings, to Sir Charles Dilke, to Messrs. Chatto and +Windus, to Mr. Laurence Binyon, Mr. G. K. Fortescue, and to Dr. G. C. +Williamson for help given to me in various ways. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I. EARLY YEARS 1 + + II. LIFE AT FELPHAM 21 + + III. THE PROCESSION OF THE PILGRIMS 32 + + IV. DECLINING YEARS 45 + + V. HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS 57 + + VI. HIS MYSTICAL NATURE 72 + + VII. HIS ART WORK 80 + + Songs of Innocence. + Book of Thel. + Gates of Paradise. + Songs of Experience. + Tales for Children. + + VIII. THE PROPHETIC BOOKS 101 + + Vision of the Daughters of Albion. + America. + Europe. + + IX. THE PROPHETIC BOOKS, continued 116 + + Book of Urizen. + The Small Book of Designs. + The Large Book of Designs. + Song of Los. + Book of Los. + Jerusalem. + Milton. + + X. WORK IN ILLUSTRATION 136 + + Young's "Night Thoughts." + Blair's "Grave." + Thornton's "Pastorals." + The Book of Job. + + XI. WORK IN THE EXHIBITION OF 1904 159 + + XII. ENGRAVINGS AND DRAWINGS IN THE PRINT ROOM 176 + + The Canterbury Pilgrimage. + Dante. + Pencil Sketches. + Works in the National Gallery. + + INDEX 195 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + TO FACE PAGE + + THE LAST JUDGMENT (from Blair's "Grave") _Frontispiece_ + + PORTRAIT OF BLAKE 1 + + THE LITTLE GIRL LOST (from "Songs of Experience") 12 + + THE DIVINE IMAGE (from "Songs of Innocence") 16 + + "AMERICA," a page from 20 + + THE LAZAR HOUSE 22 + + "EUROPE," a page from 24 + + LOS, ENITHARMON, AND ORC (from "Urizen") 26 + + THE RE-UNION OF THE SOUL AND THE BODY (from "The Grave") 32 + + THE PILGRIMAGE TO CANTERBURY (Stothard) 36 + + CHAUCER'S "CANTERBURY PILGRIMS" (Blake) 36 + + SATAN TORMENTING JOB 44 + + BLAKE'S ROOM IN FOUNTAIN COURT (F. J. Shields) 53 + + DEATH'S DOOR (from "The Grave") 66 + + THE SHEPHERD (from "Songs of Innocence") 80 + + FRONTISPIECE FROM "SONGS OF INNOCENCE" 84 + + THE LAMB (from "Songs of Innocence") 86 + + THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL, a page from 90 + + "I WANT, I WANT" (from "Gates of Paradise") 94 + + THE DELUGE (after a Plate in "Gates of Paradise") 96 + + THE TYGER (from "Songs of Experience") 98 + + INFANT JOY (from "Songs of Innocence") 100 + + "VISIONS OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION," a page from 106 + + "AMERICA," the Frontispiece to 108 + + "AMERICA," a page from 110 + + "EUROPE," the Frontispiece to ("The Ancient of Days") 112 + + "EUROPE," the first page from 114 + + "URIZEN," the title-page from 116 + + "URIZEN," Plate VI from 118 + + "THE SMALL BOOK OF DESIGNS," Plate IX from 120 + + THE ACCUSERS (from "The Large Book of Designs") 122 + + "JERUSALEM," page 33 from 128 + + ROBERT (from "Milton") 134 + + TIME SPEEDING AWAY (page 25 from "Night Thoughts") 138 + + DEATH OF THE STRONG WICKED MAN (from "The Grave") 140 + + THE SOUL RELUCTANTLY PARTING FROM THE BODY (from + "The Grave") 144 + + THORNTON'S "VIRGIL'S PASTORALS," woodcuts from 146 + + "THE BOOK OF JOB," Plate II 150 + + "THE BOOK OF JOB," Plate V 152 + + "THE BOOK OF JOB," Plate XIV 154 + + THE NATIVITY 162 + + THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT 168 + + OBERON, TITANIA, AND PUCK 170 + + VISION OF QUEEN KATHERINE 174 + + THE CIRCLE OF THE LUSTFUL (from "Dante") 180 + + PENCIL SKETCH FOR "DEATH'S DOOR" 184 + + HEAD OF AN OLD MAN 186 + + THE WHORE OF BABYLON 188 + + DAVID DELIVERED OUT OF DEEP WATERS 190 + + THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF PITT GUIDING BEHEMOTH 192 + + + + +BOOKS ON BLAKE + + +BINYON, ROBERT LAURENCE. "William Blake: being all his woodcuts +photographically reproduced in facsimile." London, 1902. 4o. [The Unicorn +Press: Little Engravings, No. 2.] + +CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN. "The Lives of the most eminent British Painters, +Sculptors and Architects." London, 1829-33. 12o. [Part of "The Family +Library," 6 vols.] Note: a second edition of this work was published in +1830-37, in 16o, 6 vols. + +ELLIS, E. J., and YEATS, W. B. "The works of William Blake, poetic, +symbolic, and critical." Edited with lithographs of the illustrated +"Prophetic Books," and a memoir and interpretation. London, B. Quaritch, +1893. 8o. 3 vols. + +GARNETT (SIR) RICHARD. "William Blake, Painter and Poet." London, 1895. 80 +pp. folio. ["The Portfolio Monographs," No. 22.] + +GILCHRIST, ALEXANDER. "The Life of W. Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus.'" With +selections from his poems and other writings. Edited by Anne Gilchrist, +with the assistance of D. G. and W. M. Rossetti. London, 1863. 8o. 2 vols. +Note: a second enlarged edition was published in 1880. London, Macmillan & +Co. 8o. 2 vols. + +MALKIN, THOMAS W. "A Father's Memoirs of his Child." London, 1806. 8o. + +ROSSETTI, W. M. "The Poetical Works of William Blake." Edited with a +prefatory memoir. London, 1874. 8o. ["The Aldine Poets." George Bell & +Sons.] + +SCOTT, WILLIAM BELL. "Exhibition of the Works of William Blake." With +introductory memoir. London, The Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1876. 4o. + +SCOTT, WILLIAM BELL. "William Blake." Etchings from his works (with +descriptive text). London, Chatto and Windus, 1878. Folio. + +SMETHAM, JAMES. "Essay on Blake." (Reprinted in Gilchrist's work, q.v., +from the "London Quarterly Review"). + +SWINBURNE, A. C. "William Blake." A critical essay, with illustrations +from Blake's designs in facsimile, coloured and plain. Second edition. +London, 1868. 8o. + + + + +[Illustration: WILLIAM BLAKE] + + + + +WILLIAM BLAKE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +EARLY YEARS + + +The work of one of the greatest spirits that ever made Art his medium has +yet its way to make among the general public. The world entertained the +angel unawares, for three-quarters of a century have passed since the +death of William Blake, and still his name and his work are but +indifferently known. Yet to those that know them, the designs from his +pencil, and the poems from his pen, are among the most precious things +that Art has bequeathed to us. + +It is my purpose in the following pages to tell over again the main +outlines of his life, quite shortly and simply, for the great biography on +Blake (that of Alexander Gilchrist) can be consulted by all, and contains +almost every detail known about him. To this monumental work, and to +Messrs. Ellis and Yeats's more recently issued and exhaustive Commentary +on Blake, I owe all my facts. + +A brief memoir is a necessary preface to the review I propose making of +those engraved and painted books, pictures, drawings and engravings of +Blake's which our National Collections possess. + +William Blake was one of those unique beings who live above this actual +world, in the high places of imagination. At four years old he saw his +first vision, as his wife reminded him in old age, in the presence of Mr. +Crabb Robinson: "You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you +were four years old, and He put His head to the window and set you +screaming." Quaintly, crudely, as the story is told by Mrs. Blake, it +bears testimony to the fact that the visionary faculty was developed in +Blake from the beginning. Imagination claimed him definitely as her child +from that early day when, having rambled far afield into the country (as +it was his pastime to do throughout life), he saw, in a meadow near +Dulwich, a tree amongst whose branches glistening angels clustered and +sang. It may be, as one of Blake's critics suggests, that Nature was +herself the basis of the supernatural beauty he saw, though he was all +unwitting of it. Standing beneath a tree laden with delicate pink blossom, +and gazing up into the rosy gloom, Blake may well have translated this +pulsating beauty into a miracle. Above among the greenery he may have +seemed to catch glimpses of aspiring hands and faces among the crowding +wings of flame and rose and sun-kissed gold. A little breeze would set +angelic wings and garments all a-moving and a-fluttering, and a thrush's +voice suddenly cleaving the silence seem an angel's song indeed, too +exquisite to be endured without tears, to the quivering, spell-bound +wanderer. Such _may_ have been the explanation of this early vision, but +Blake himself never attributed any natural cause to such spiritual +manifestations. Everything was alive to him with a strange inner life: the +"vegetable world," as he called it, was but the shadow of the real world +of imagination, whose spiritual population was more clearly discernible to +his highly-wrought consciousness, than natural phenomena themselves. +Narrowly did he escape a whipping from his father, the worthy hosier, for +what that matter-of-fact man could not but consider a most impudent +invention on the child's part. The incident was a foreshadowing of the +poet-painter's life. The mysterious regions in which his spirit wandered +so fearlessly, and which his poems and his drawings represented to the +world, had but scanty attraction for his time. It would be truer perhaps +to say that they were more often regarded with fear and repulsion. The +mortal who dares to raise even the corner of the veil that so discreetly +hides from our material world the many other existent conditions of +consciousness, the great Beyond of Spirit Life, does so at his own risk, +and with the certainty of earning his fellow men's distrust and +disapproval. The outlook on that immensity has a tendency, it is true, to +endanger the perfect mental equilibrium; but though the age--professing +faith in a set of decent religious formulae, but in reality sceptical of +all spiritual life and destiny--called Blake mad, he was recognized by a +few chosen spirits as a great master and seer. The story of his life +contains but few incidents, but through these incidents we see a soul +travelling. + +William Blake was born in 1757 at 28, Broad Street, Carnaby Market, Soho. +The old house still stands, but looks very dirty and depressing, like the +street, which, since Blake played in it, has suffered a dingy declension. +Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, who have added some biographical details to +Gilchrist's Life, state that William's father, the hosier, James Blake, +was the son of an Irishman, one John O'Neil. John O'Neil married a girl +from Rathmines, Dublin, called Ellen Blake, and as he soon afterwards got +into debt and trouble of one sort and another, he dropped his name of +O'Neil and adopted his wife's maiden name. This fact, if established +beyond doubt, would seem to be of singular importance, as the presence of +Irish blood in William Blake would account for several strange +characteristics which are not otherwise understandable. The Kelts are +always particularly sensitive and open to spiritual experience. +Imagination, second sight, and acute psychic consciousness, seem to be +the peculiar attributes of the race; and these gifts are seldom to be +found in a pure Anglo-Saxon. There were four other children, James, of +whom we shall hear again, Robert, our artist's beloved younger brother, +John, a ne'er-do-weel, and a girl of whom not much is known. + +Very early William developed a taste for art, and his father, with more +sense than usually characterizes the parents of great men, allowed him to +follow his bent, and sent him, from the age of ten to fourteen, to the +drawing class of one Pars, in the Strand. We read of his attending picture +sales and occasionally buying drawings and prints after Raphael, Michael +Angelo, Albert Dürer, and other old masters at prices which would make the +modern collector green with envy. But we do not hear of Blake's attending +any other school either before or after leaving Pars for the purpose of +furthering his general education. All the knowledge that he acquired +outside Art was self-chosen and self-taught. A sound general education is +the firmest basis on which to build a tower of observation from which the +world and life may be surveyed with judgement. Blake's beautiful and +fantastic house of thought, however, was erected on no such foundation. +Perhaps instinct guided his choice of mental food: certain it is that the +peculiar education he gave himself enabled him to preserve his own +personality in all its vital energy. Pars appears to have been the +Squarcione of that generation. He had been sent to Greece by the +Dilettante Society to study ruined temples and broken statues. On his +return to England he set up a school in the Strand to teach drawing from +plaster casts after the antique. + +When he was fourteen, with a view to getting a trade by which he could +earn his daily bread, Blake's father determined to apprentice him to an +engraver. He took him first to Rylands, an eminent engraver with a Court +appointment, but the boy said after the interview, "Father, I do not like +that man's face. He looks as if he would live to be hanged." Strange +forecast this proved to be, for in 1783 Rylands was indeed hanged for +forgery. Blake was finally apprenticed to Basire, a sound craftsman, but +of a somewhat hard and dry manner. Basire's style as an engraver set its +stamp on Blake, there is no doubt. It would have hampered most men +severely, rendering their work formal and immobile, but Blake turned it to +a strange account, and it became expressive in his hands. When in his +later years he found that he had outgrown it, he modified it to suit his +new requirements, but it had been a laborious and useful servant, if not a +gracious one. During his apprenticeship Basire set him to draw all the +mediaeval tombs and monuments in Westminster Abbey and other churches for +a certain publication to be brought out by the firm. In doing this Blake +imbibed large draughts of the intense and fervent Gothic spirit. Its deep +innerness, its passionate aspiration, its whimsicality, and its quaint +decorative exuberance, expressed alike in angels and gargoyles, found and +touched a vibrating chord in his heart. Gothic art entered into him and +became part of him. Its influence was strong, though it took a +characteristically Blakeian expression always, and those long mornings +spent among the slanting sunbeams and the whispering silence of the +chapels around the King Confessor's tomb, were among the truly eventful +incidents of his life. + +In many of his designs a Gothic church with spires and buttresses like +Westminster,--often a mere symbol sufficient to recall it, occasionally +carefully and elaborately drawn in--stands as an embodiment of Blake's +idea of worship. + +Strange thoughts must have come to him among those forests of slender +pillars and arches! Some hint of them is conveyed by an engraving he did +during the period of drawing in the Abbey. It is after a drawing (probably +one bought by him cheap at a sale room) by Michael Angelo, and has the +imaginative inscription written on it by Blake, "Joseph of Arimathea among +the Rocks of Albion. This is one of the Gothic artists who built the +cathedrals in what we call the dark ages, wandering about in sheepskin and +goatskin, of whom the world was not worthy." Joseph of Arimathea, it will +be remembered, is supposed to have come to Glastonbury in 63 A.D. and +built the first Christian Church. + +He did not always work in the Abbey in quiet. There is a story told by +Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, of how he was plagued by the Westminster boys +till he laid his grievance before the Dean, who thereupon deprived the +boys of the right to wander about the Abbey at their pleasure, a right +denied to them to this day. + +At twenty, Blake's apprenticeship to Basire being ended, he attended the +Academy schools and drew from the antique under Keeper Moser, picking out +for his chief delight and most ardent study the drawings of Michael Angelo +and Raphael--a very barbaric choice it was considered, according to the +decadent taste of the period. Moser recommended him to give up poring over +"those old hard, stiff, dry, unfinished works of art," and to turn his +attention to Le Brun and Rubens, some of whose drawings he fetched out for +Blake's inspection. Blake, however, who was never able to conceal his +thoughts, nor to express them in anything but forcible terms, burst out, +"These things that you call finished, are not even begun; how then can +they be finished?" and comments on the incident, which he relates in his +MS. notes on "Reynolds' Discourses," made in his old age, "that the man +who does not know the beginning, cannot know the end of art." By this he +meant, that to be preoccupied as were Rubens and Le Brun, with the merely +faithful representation of the beauty of the body, to dwell as an end in +itself on the wonder of white shoulders, tapering fingers, and too +luscious flesh, to linger in the folds and intricacies of silk and velvet +robes, and to spend strength and power on these things, was mere +foolishness and blundering. + +Physical beauty, splendour of colour, only thrilled and arrested him when +he recognized in them the symbols of an idea, when they seemed to hint of +things rarer and more excellent than any purely natural or intrinsic +attribute. If he could discriminate its eternal inner message, and could +make it visible to the world, then was physical beauty worthy of +reproduction. But he seldom dwelt on beauty for its own sake, but only +when it was spiritually significant; so it is easy to see why he was +inaccessible to the influence of such artists as Rubens and Le Brun. + +At the Academy Schools he had the opportunity of drawing from the living +model, and profited by it to a certain limited extent. But he always had +an aversion to it, declaring that to his whimsical nature it "smelt of +mortality." However he might and did justify his negligence of this +important branch of technique, his art was necessarily weakened by it. +Technique is the language of art, and is only to be obtained by frequent +and laboriously faithful reference to nature. It is true that Blake's +strong power of generalizing, along with his marvellous gift of recalling +at desire things discriminated by him, made the achievement of technique +through methods of life study a less urgent necessity to him than to other +men who had no such retentive artistic memories. Essential lines Blake +never failed to give, but by intention rather than from any inability he +seldom gives more than these essential lines in the figures he drew and +painted. + +After all it is possible that his power of delineating swift movement, and +the great range of emotions that correspond to that, might have been +injured or lost by too close an application to the artificially posed +human figure. We have seen much life lost in the too close study of life, +as in the otherwise exquisite work of Lord Leighton. + +Blake believed that to draw from the typical forms seen by him in vision +was his true purpose and aim, and the study of individual human forms +filled his eye with confusion, for, as he was for ever asserting, Nature +seemed to him but a faint and garbled version of the grand originals seen +in imagination, that is, in truth. + +While Blake was educating himself in art, he had to earn his livelihood by +engraver's work, and between 1779 and 1782 one or two booksellers employed +him to engrave designs after various artists. Among these artists was +Stothard, to whom, in 1782, Blake was introduced. Stothard brought Flaxman +and Blake together, and the three became warm friends. It was only after +many years, and then through the machinations of an evil man (the +publisher Cromek), that Blake became estranged from Stothard, and +partially also from Flaxman. + +In 1780 Blake exhibited his first picture in the Academy, "The Death of +Earl Godwin." It was only the twelfth exhibition of the institution, and +the first to be held at Somerset House. How curiously do its four hundred +and eighty-seven exhibits (including wax work and a design for a fan) +contrast with our mammoth Academies of to-day! Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mary +Moser, Gainsborough, Angelica Kauffman, Cosway and Fuseli, were all +contributors in the year of grace 1780. Blake was in sympathy with none of +them save Fuseli, who, although a man greatly overrated in his day, had a +real sense of the potency of the invisible world, mainly, however, of +that portion of it concerned with arch-fiends, witches, demons, and +baleful omens. + +In 1782 Blake married Catherine Bouchier, and set up housekeeping in Green +Street. It appears that he had been much in love with a girl called Pollie +Wood, who had jilted him. Going to stay at Richmond in a state of deep +depression, he made the acquaintance of Catherine Bouchier. Messrs. Ellis +and Yeats have added this detail to the first biographer's story. When she +first entered the room where he sat, she was overcome by such intense +emotion that she had to withdraw for awhile. She afterwards admitted that +at that moment she became suddenly aware that she was in the presence of +her future husband. + +Small wonder that Blake felt an irresistible affinity for this charming +dark-eyed girl whose fervent susceptible spirit responded so mysteriously +to his own. No marriage was ever more happy. Catherine was of humble +origin, and practically no education, for at the time of her marriage she +was unable to read or write, but nevertheless she possessed the rare and +delicate qualities necessary for the mate of a man like Blake. She early +realized that the man she had married was no ordinary one, and to be of +service to her dear "Mr. Blake" (as she always called him with quaint +reverence), to enter into his thoughts, to smooth the path of his material +life, and to conform her young and unlessoned girlhood to his difficult +standard of plain living and high thinking, became her one absorbing +object. + +There were a few rough passages in the early days of married life, which +Gilchrist indicates, but they soon disappeared. It was merely the friction +and heat given off, before the two strong natures were fused into a +perfect union. Catherine's nature appears to have been a compound of +ardent worship and pregnant sympathy. Never did a woman so forget herself +in reverencing, nigh worshipping, the man she had chosen to marry. + +During an unusually long, and in many respects a peculiarly isolated life, +these two lived together, the one master mind and purpose informing both. + +No words could do full justice to the beautiful life of Catherine Blake. +It is true that no ordinary man could have drawn such harmony from the +vivacious, impulsive, passionate nature of the girl. All the generous love +that her nature possessed she lavished on Blake, and her complete +absorption in him seems to have satisfied the maternal cravings which were +to have no other satisfaction, for William and Catherine had no children. +The work of caring for the few rooms which were all that Blake's means +allowed, and his ambition desired, for the housing of their bodies, this +Catherine did with the thoroughness of the true aesthete. She cooked, +sewed, swept, dusted, and washed, and yet found time to learn from her +husband how to read and write, the use of the graver, and even to colour +with neat and precise hand some of the prints he made. Added to this she +was soon able to read with intelligence the books he praised, and listened +wondering to the songs he made, finding them of a heavenly significance +and beauty; and when his tense nerves and superabundant physical energy +drove Blake forth to stretch his limbs and cool his brain in long country +walks of thirty, and occasionally forty miles at a stretch, Catherine went +with him, and cheerfully tramped along beside him, silent or responsive as +he set the mood. + +Again, when in the night time visions appeared to his teeming +ever-inventive brain, and he must needs get up and write or draw while the +divine "mania" was upon him, then Catherine arose softly and sat beside +that wondrous husband in her white nightgown, her whole consciousness +hanging upon his least movement or utterance, and her whole being +thrilling sympathetically to those invisible presences which moved his +spirit. Like Mary, "she kept all these things in her heart and pondered +them." + +Speaking of his wife, one cannot but recall that in Blake's mysterious and +unorthodox creed the doctrine of free love was a very favourite one, on +which in his poetry he was never tired of insisting. Yet he seems to have +desired freedom, only, as Mr. Swinburne finely shows, "for the soul's +sake." If love is bound, he argued, what merit is there in faithfulness? +Love, to be what love in perfect development should be,--to be what Love +in its very essence predicates,--must be free. Such a creed, proclaimed by +the lips of the most austere of men in matters sensual, seems to shadow +forth one dimly apprehended aspect of a truth, which may be realized +perhaps, in a future and more perfect state of society. + +"In a myrtle shade," and "William Bond," are two among the poems in +Blake's MS. book, which have their origin in thoughts about free love. + +The year after his marriage, 1782-83, Blake had to turn to engraving in +real earnest to pay for the necessities of the modest _ménage_ in Green +Street. We find him engaged mainly in engraving plates after Stothard's +refined and graceful designs. In after years, when he was estranged from +Stothard, Blake used to say that many of these same designs contained +ideas stolen from himself. There can be small doubt that Stothard did owe +something to Blake's influence. Fuseli frankly declared that "Blake is +damned good to steal from," and accordingly adopted his ideas, and in one +instance, at least, a complete design. + +A kind and appreciative couple, the Rev. Henry and Mrs. Mathew, received +Blake in their drawing-room about this time, and gave him an honoured +place among their guests. It was they who paid in part for the production +of his "Poetical Sketches," and Flaxman, who had always a strong +admiration of Blake's poetical genius, helped,--an act of beautiful +generosity in a young artist with his own way to make. + +The "Poetical Sketches" are among the tenderest lyric notes uttered by +Blake, and their bird-like spontaneity and lilt recall, says Dante Gabriel +Rossetti, "the best period of English song-writing, whose rarest treasures +lie scattered among the plays of our Elizabethan dramatists." These wild +wood-notes gushing unselfconscious from a heart glad with youth and fair +visions are in strange contrast to the artificial, trifling, and +unsatisfying poetry of the age. Blake himself writes in the "Poem to the +Muses": + + How have you left the ancient love + That bards of old enjoy'd in you! + The languid strings do scarcely move, + The sound is forced, the notes are few. + +What can be said of that perfect lyric, written when Blake was but +fourteen, "My silks and fine array," and that other which I shall surely +be forgiven for quoting as it stands: + + How sweet I roamed from field to field + And tasted all the summer's pride, + Till I the Prince of Love beheld + Who in the sunny beams did glide. + + He show'd me lilies for my hair, + And blushing roses for my brow; + He led me through his gardens fair + Where all his golden pleasures grow. + + With sweet Maydews my wings are wet, + And Phoebus fired my vocal rage; + He caught me in his silken net, + And shut me in his golden cage. + + He loves to sit and hear me sing, + Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; + Then stretches out my golden wing, + And mocks my loss of liberty. + + +[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF EXPERIENCE," +1794] + + +To a poetically sensitive mind, verses like these remain like a beautiful +echo in the memory, having a musical charm apart from the sense of the +words. Although in this little book it is my purpose to dwell mainly on +Blake's manifestation of himself as a designer and painter, I cannot avoid +lingering sometimes on his poetical expression. For the creative impulse +that clothed its thought in a garment of words is the same as that which +is embodied in plastic forms and symbolic colouring. Blake's invention had +two outlets, but was itself one stream of energy only. + +The lines to the Evening Star are incomparably sweet and haunting: + + Thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening, + Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light + Thy brilliant torch of love; thy radiant crown + Put on, and smile upon our evening bed! + Smile on our loves, and whilst thou drawest round + The curtains of the sky, scatter thy dew + On every flower that closes its sweet eyes + In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on + The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes, + And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon, + Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide, + And then the lion glares through the dim forest, + The fleeces of our flocks are covered with + Thy sacred dew; protect them with thine influence. + +The lingering subtle and most musical sweetness of such lines as those +quoted above, "Let thy west wind sleep on the lake; speak silence with thy +glimmering eyes, and wash the dusk with silver," can be surpassed by none +of the great masters of melody. So unaccustomed were the ears of the time +to such perfectly natural bursts of song, that the Rev. Henry Mathew +considered it necessary to apologize to the refined and fastidious for +calling attention to them, "hoping their poetic originality merits some +respite from oblivion." Blake might well seem strange to these _borné_ +people, for he was no other than the herald and forerunner of the poetic +renaissance of the beginning of the nineteenth century. + +In the Mathew's drawing-room, surrounded by a wondering group of +dilettanti, above whom he towered head and shoulders intellectually, he +was encouraged to sing his "Songs of Innocence," which he had already +written, though not produced, to his own music. Blake had then a mode of +musical expression as well as an artistic and a literary one, though no +record of it has been preserved. With these three keys he unlocked the +doors of materialism outwards, on to the vistas of God-thrilled Eternity. + +In 1784 Blake exhibited two drawings in the Royal Academy, "War, unchained +by an Angel--Fire, Pestilence and Famine following," and "A Breach in the +City--the Morning after a Battle." It is obvious from these that his style +was already formed in all its strength and almost terrifying +individuality. + +During this year Blake's father died, and William and Catherine returned +to Broad Street and took up their abode next to the paternal dwelling now +occupied by the elder brother James. James, though a Swedenborgian and +accounting himself a godly person, was also a busy seeker after this +world's good things, and seems to have had little in common with William, +though for some years friendly relations were maintained between them. +Blake set up a shop as printseller and engraver in Broad Street in company +with a man named Parker, whose acquaintance he had made in the old Basire +days, but it was a short-lived affair, and soon came to an end. + +It was in this year that William's younger brother Robert became his +pupil. Nothing much can be discovered about the personality of Robert, but +from Blake's own writings and designs we are able to see how close a tie +of affection existed between these two brothers. + +Robert only lived three years after becoming William's house-mate and +pupil. In his final illness it was not Catherine but William who nursed +him day and night untiringly, with passionate love and care; and when at +last the end came, Blake saw his brother's soul fare forth, clapping its +hands for joy, from the mortal tenement--a vision to bear fruit afterwards +in his designs for Blair's "Grave." Then he was beset with sheer physical +exhaustion, and going to bed, slept for three days and three nights. Many +years after we find him going back into this period of personal sorrow, to +extract therefrom comfort for Hayley, who had lost his son. + +"I know," he writes to him, "that our deceased friends are more really +with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years +ago I lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in +the spirit, and see him in remembrance in the regions of my imagination. I +hear his advice and even now write from his dictate. Forgive me for +expressing to you my enthusiasm, which I wish all to partake of, since it +is to me a source of immortal joy, even in this world. May you continue to +be so more and more, and to be more and more persuaded that every mortal +loss is an immortal gain. The ruins of time build mansions in +Eternity":--from all of which it is easy to see that Robert's influence on +the soul of William augmented after his death. + +In 1788 Blake removed from Broad Street to No. 28, Poland Street, which +lies in its immediate neighbourhood. A coolness may have sprung up +between James and William, for the brothers saw little of each other now. + +The following characteristic story, taken from Mr. Tatham's MS., and +retold by Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, helps to draw in Blake's psychological +portrait. + +In Poland Street Blake's windows looked over Astley's Yard,--Astley of +circus fame. One day on looking out he saw a boy limping up and down, +dragging a heavy block chained to his foot. It was a hobble used for +horses, and Blake, with his brain on fire and pity and rage tearing at his +heart, was soon down in the yard among the circus company. He gave them a +passionate speech on liberty, appealed to them as true men and Britons not +to punish a fellow-countryman in a manner that would degrade a slave, and +finally saw the crowd yield to his eloquence, and his point was gained. +The boy was loosed, and Blake returned to his own world of work and +vision. + +Some hours after, Mr. Astley, who had been out during the incident +related, called on Blake, and stormed and raved at what he called his +interference. At first Blake was as angry as Astley, his blood was up, and +there seemed every prospect of a very violent quarrel. But suddenly, in +the midst of his anger, Blake remembered that the amelioration of the +boy's condition was his first object, and, quickly changing his tactics, +he so worked on the higher moral nature which Astley evidently possessed, +that he completely won him over to his views, and the two men +parted--friends. Ever after, however, as Messrs. Ellis and Yeats point +out, the chain remained with Blake as the symbol of cruel oppression and +slavery, and we shall see him using it in his designs again and again as +such. + + +[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789] + + +In 1790 he produced the "Songs of Innocence," printed and published, as +well as designed, engraved, and composed by himself. In the long and +romantic history of art, nothing is more strange than the story of how +this little book came into being. Blake was unknown to the world and had +no credit with publishers, nor had he the wherewithal to publish at his +own expense the poems which he had written and called "Songs of +Innocence." Yet he greatly desired to see them set forth in a book with +appropriate and significant designs. But how was this to be accomplished? +He pondered the matter long, till at last light and leading came. In the +silence of one midnight his dead brother Robert appeared to him and +instructed him as to the method--an entirely original one--which he should +use. The very next day, Blake being urgent to begin his work, his wife +went out early with half-a-crown (all the money they had in the world), +and laid out one and tenpence on the necessary material. And in faith and +gladness, relying on that mystical power in himself which took and used +his hand and eye and brain almost without his will, he began to make the +first of his lovely engraved and painted books. This is the alpha of a +long series of engraved books which issued from his hand at intervals for +some years. While in Poland Street he wrote, but did not publish till long +after, the "Ghost of Abel," in 1789 the "Book of Thel," in 1790 the +"Marriage of Heaven and Hell," and in 1791 a poem, the first of a +projected series of seven books, called "The French Revolution." + +This so-called poem owed its birth to the fact that about this period +Blake became one of a literary, artistic, and political set who met at the +house of Johnson the publisher. At these gatherings Mary Wollstonecraft +arrayed her charms to storm the citadel of Fuseli's cynical heart, +unavailingly. Among other guests were Tom Paine, author of "The Rights of +Man," whom eventually Blake was the means of saving, by a timely word of +warning, from arrest in England. He judiciously advised his flight to +France, at the right moment for his safety. Godwin and Holcroft and +several revolutionary dreamers were members of this _coterie_. Blake's +enthusiasm was set all aglow by a philosophy which saw in the French +Revolution a great renovating process,--the fire to burn up the ignorance +and superstition and class boundaries of the ancient order, the +introduction of a new reign of righteousness and peace. + +In effect, this new philosophy which fired the imagination of Blake had a +basis of materialism and violence which would have found no answering +response in his soul, had he sought to investigate it. His sympathy with +the group was intellectual, and with the higher manifestations of its +creed alone. It led to no political action. He had far other work to do +than that of a political agitator, but all expansive doctrines which made +for liberty and individuality fired the imagination and fed the intellect +of Blake. Democracy was his ideal, and democratic virtues won his +admiration; indeed, he dared to flaunt the "_bonnet rouge_" of liberty in +London streets in this agitated period, but after the Days of Terror in +'92 he tore off the white cockade and never again donned the Cap of +Liberty. But if his work was not to be in the political arena, he was in +his own way hastening the coming of that better and more immaterial +kingdom which these young liberators only half conceived. + +In 1792 died the great leader of English art, Sir Joshua Reynolds. His +work, concerned as it was with the exquisite graces of this passing world, +had nothing to say to Blake, who regarded it in the light of his own +artistic standpoint, with positive aversion. It often happens that a man +who feels it his burning mission to work out and reveal some hitherto +neglected or unseen aspect of truth, does so at the cost of a +one-sidedness which is a necessary defect of his quality. Blake could no +more appreciate Sir Joshua--at least at this stage of his being--than Sir +Joshua could appreciate Blake. The veteran Reynolds once told him, when a +young man, "to work with less extravagance and more simplicity, and to +correct his drawing." Blake never got over that. We can imagine the +suppressed heat with which he listened choking to the advice of the +popular artist who was so utterly ignorant of his aims and ideals. To us, +who may enter into the soul of each, it is given to realize that they, and +all the company of the world's great artists, have furthered the true work +of art; have all helped, and are helping, according to their gifts and in +their degree, to rear the walls and set with windows and crown with +battlements and towers, the palace of beauty for the soul of man to dwell +in with delight and worship. That the workers have not always recognized +each other is matter for regret, though it is scarcely perhaps to be +wondered at, seeing that each is set on emphasizing and relieving against +its background the one point which seems to him necessary and valuable. + +The characteristic notes which Blake appended to Reynolds' "Discourses" +many years later, express much of his dislike. Truly, it is easy to +conceive of a mind offering nothing but delight and admiration to +Reynolds' practice, yet excited to a grave disapproval by much of his +theory, or what he states as his theory. For Reynolds actually taught that +genius--such as his own, for instance--was a state to be inducted into by +precept, and evolved through study, instead of being a thing of fire, a +tongue of flame from on high, set on a man as a seal, from which he cannot +escape. I am reminded of Rossetti here, who quite sincerely told Mr. Hall +Caine, "I paint by a set of unwritten but clearly-defined rules, which I +could teach to any man as systematically as you could teach arithmetic." +Ah! that such genius _might_ thus be taught! + +However, Reynolds, his practice and theory alike, were by Blake swept into +a limbo of unconditional condemnation, though occasionally, in spite of +the prejudice he nursed against Sir Joshua, he flashed out notes of +emphatic approval, on certain utterances in the great man's "Discourses." + + +[Illustration: PAGE FROM "AMERICA, A PROPHECY," 1793 + +Printed in blue, from the Print Room copy] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +LIFE AT FELPHAM + + +In 1793 Blake removed across the river to Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, +where he lived for seven years of great mental and spiritual vitality, +seeing visions and dreaming dreams and embodying them in beautiful +designs. He was a tireless worker, never resting, and sleeping much less +than other men. These Lambeth days were days of comparative prosperity +with the Blakes, whose wants were so simple and few. The little house in +which they lived possessed rustic charms--a garden with a summer-house, +and a vine climbing over the back of the house, whose leaves made a +pleasant rustling in summer. A view of the river, too, could not have +failed to add a significant charm to the place. On its shining surface +might be descried ships like souls faring to the world's great +market-place, to barter and to receive merchandise; while others, with +white sails set, slipped quietly down the river and out to the wide +mysterious sea. Blake had a few pupils, too, and at this period he made +the acquaintance of Mr. Butts, who was a staunch friend and true +appreciator for thirty years. During all that time he was a constant buyer +of our artist's work, and bought sometimes at the rate of one drawing a +week. In time Mr. Butts' spacious house in Fitzroy Square became a regular +Blake Gallery. The average price he paid was £1 to 30_s._ a design or +picture. To Mr. Butts' great honour be it said that he never assumed the +airs of a patron, never tried to bind or hamper Blake's genius, or to +dictate or direct his choice of subjects or treatment of them. He seems to +have realized that this man was "a prince in Israel," and the lordship of +his ideas not to be questioned, but accepted humbly and with gratitude. + +In a future chapter I hope to deal with the Blake drawings and easel +pictures done for Mr. Butts, which were available to the public in the +Exhibition at Messrs. Carfax's Rooms in Ryder Street, held in 1904. + +Blake seems to have enjoyed a little wave of recognition at +Lambeth--popularity it can hardly be called--but it was not long-lived. At +one time he was even suggested as drawing-master to the Royal Family, but +declined the position, not from modesty, but from devotion to his true +_métier_--the preservation and expression of spiritual ideas--with which +such a post would probably have interfered. + +Two acts of secret and most munificent generosity are recorded by Tatham, +and quoted by Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, concerning Blake while at Lambeth. + +He gave £40 (he seldom after had half as much money beside him) to a +friend in distress, and his deep sympathetic heart being moved by the +sight of a sick young man, an artist, who daily passed their door, he and +his Kate made the young man's acquaintance, and for the love of Christ and +in memory of brother Robert, finally took him into their house and tended +him till his death some months later. + +While at Lambeth he made three large and important +drawings--"Nebuchadnezzar," an enlarged edition of the bearded figure on +hands and knees which occurs in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"; "The +Lazar House" and "The Elohim creating Adam." He also made designs for +Young's "Night Thoughts." There were 537 designs made, and Blake only took +a year to do them. A selected few were engraved. While at Lambeth he +printed also his "Visions of the Daughters of Albion," "America," +"Europe," "Urizen," "The Gates of Paradise," "The Book of Los," "The Song +of Los," and "Ahania." The list implies steady application, and untiring +intellectual and spiritual energy. + + +[Illustration: THE LAZAR HOUSE, FROM MILTON + +Water-colour, 1795] + + +The introduction of our painter, in 1800, by his old friend Flaxman, to +Hayley, poetaster and dilettante, marks the beginning of a new epoch in +his life. + +Hayley, the friend of Gibbon and, later, of Cowper (whose biography he +wrote), was a characteristic product of the last quarter of the eighteenth +century,--that age of complaisant preoccupation with trifles. + +This poetically barren interval before the birth of the wonderful new +school of poetry had, since the best days of Cowper, but one star above +its horizon--or was it a will-o'-the-wisp?--the _soi-disant_ poet Hayley. +Complaisantly he twinkled on his admiring world, and, striking the lyre +with gracious hand, sang with modest satisfaction "The Triumphs of +Temper." This now forgotten work earned him the position of "greatest of +living poets," and he assumed his high seat in the literary world with +bustling alacrity. Above all things he aspired to culture, not at the +expense of a very continuous effort or strain, it is true, but he loved to +collect around him artists and men of letters to whom he could play the +part of a somewhat undersized Lorenzo de' Medici. That they would respond +gracefully, and take their parts becomingly in this garden-comedy, was all +that he required of his court. + +It will be remembered that Romney was one of his artist friends, and that +the connection proved in a way economically disastrous to the painter, for +Hayley was an extravagant man, though he professed simple tastes, and +encouraged poor Romney in his mania for building and other lavish +expenditure. + +His influence, such as it was, was stimulating to none of his friends, +though he meant well and kindly enough. He affected the part of the +country gentleman, as well as that of the high priest of culture, and +delighted in patronage. + +Soon after his acquaintance with Blake began, his old friend Cowper died +under tragic conditions, and a week later Hayley's only child (an +illegitimate son) died also. The boy was a youth of promise, and had been +a pupil of Flaxman. So he had gratified as well as filled the poor +father's heart. Hayley's trouble called forth a letter from Blake, which I +quoted when writing on the death of Robert, and it seems to have touched, +perhaps comforted, Hayley, who even in his deep affliction assumed a pose +not natural or spontaneous. + +Blake was recommended by Flaxman as an engraver and designer (if the +latter should be required), and Hayley proposed that the Blakes should +come and live at Felpham, near his own place of Eartham in Sussex, in +order that his new _protégé_ might engrave the illustrations to the life +of Cowper which he was now about to write, under Hayley's own eye. + +The idea pleased Blake, while Mrs. Blake, he wrote, "is like a flame of +many colours of precious jewels, whenever she hears it named." As a matter +of fact, Hayley did not live at Eartham now, as the place was an expensive +one to keep up, but had built himself a wonderful turretted marine +"cottage," with a library and covered court for equestrian exercise at +Felpham. + + +[Illustration: PLATE FROM "EUROPE," PRINTED 1794 + +Coloured by hand] + + +In the September of 1800, Blake being then forty-three years old, the +husband and wife took up their abode in a pretty little cottage by the sea +at Felpham, and began a new manner of life. If Hercules Buildings, +Lambeth, had afforded Blake hints and types of spiritual life and +light, how much larger a vista must have opened to him at Felpham. He used +to wander musing along the seashore, and more than once saw the yellow +sands peopled by a host of souls long since departed from this +earth--Moses and the Prophets, Homer, Dante, Milton: "all," Blake said, +"majestic shadows, gray but luminous, and superior to the common height of +men." Many visions came to him at first. It is not wonderful that this +should have been so, for there was nothing that did not teem with +suggestions to his subjective mind, and when he received a new influx of +spiritual light, as he seemed to have had at Felpham, then, indeed, were +blossoms, stars and stones, nay, the very air he breathed, alive with a +strange, sentient, crowding population, to whose spiritual utterances he +listened, whose forms he strained his mental sight to realize. + +In a letter to Flaxman, beginning, "Dear Sculptor of Eternity," Blake +writes in the first effervescence of delight: "Felpham is a sweet place +for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on +all sides her golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; +voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms +more distinctly seen." + +For a while all went very well indeed, and the first part of his sojourn +at Felpham was a sort of charmed circle in his life. "Mr. Hayley acts like +a prince," "Felpham is the sweetest spot on earth," "work will go on here +with God-speed," "Find that I can work with greater pleasure than ever," +are phrases which occur in the enthusiastic letters of the period. But +gradually Hayley's constant companionship, his amiable but fatuous and +gushing friendship, acted like the hated chain of slavery on Blake's +electric and expansive temperament. Hayley's mind was set on little +things, trivial business and futile undertakings, and his vanity and +self-satisfaction about all his doings came at last to be exasperating to +Blake. In spite of his generosity, his lavish but undiscerning praise, and +the commissions for engraving and designs with which he supplied our +artist, Blake little by little found himself goaded to madness by the +ever-flowing stream of Hayley's conventionality and watery enthusiasms. +Hayley attempted to enlarge Blake's education by reading to him Klopstock +and translating as he went along--a proceeding that must have bored our +fiery genius to tears. He also, with the kindest intentions in the world, +obtained commissions for Blake to paint miniatures--hardly, one would +think, a congenial form of art to him, but one which at the beginning +appears to have interested him nevertheless. + +A couplet he wrote in the Note-book at the time evidences the irritated +nerves that Hayley's unspiritual contact set on edge: + + Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache. + Do be my enemy for friendship's sake. + +The letters, too, to Mr. Butts give direct insight into his state of mind, +and the points of sharp disagreement and intellectual misunderstanding +between the two men are easily traced. + +It appears that "Hayley was as much averse to a page of Blake's poetry as +to a chapter in the Bible." + +Blake the creator and artist was unintelligible and foreign to Hayley, +who, always satisfied with his own judgement, sought to turn Blake from +designing and to chain him to the hack work of engraving. + + +[Illustration: LOS, ENITHARMON AND ORC + +Colour-print from "Urizen," 1794] + + +By degrees the visions that had so often and radiantly appeared to Blake +on his first coming to Felpham seemed to forsake him. As he became +involved in Hayley's pursuits, and sought to work out Hayley's plans for +him, the visions even appeared to be angry with him. Then, indeed, it +seemed that he was in danger of "bartering his birthright for a mess of +pottage." He writes to Mr. Butts: + +"My unhappiness has arisen from a source which, if explored too narrowly, +might hurt my pecuniary circumstances, as my dependence is on engraving at +present, and particularly the engravings I have in hand for Mr. H., and I +find on all hands great objections to my doing anything but the mere +drudgery of business, and intimations that if I do not confine myself to +this, I shall not live. This has always pursued me.... This from Johnson +and Fuseli brought me down here, and this from Mr. H. will bring me back +again. For that I cannot live without doing my duty to lay up treasures in +heaven, is certain and determined, and to this I have long made up my +mind.... But," he goes on to say, "if we fear to do the dictates of our +angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us; if we refuse to do +spiritual acts because of natural fears and natural desires, who can +describe the dismal torments of such a state? I too well remember the +threats I heard" (_i.e._, in vision). "If you, who are organized by Divine +Providence for spiritual commission, refuse and bury your talents in the +earth, even though you should want natural bread--sorrow and desperation +pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to +eternity. Everyone in eternity will leave you, aghast at the man who was +crowned with glory and honour by his brethren and betrayed their cause to +their enemies. You will be called the base Judas who betrayed his friend." + +Blake was the apostle and martyr of this devotion to the high spiritual +mission of Art. He would make no compromise with the world. + +In a letter to Mr. Butts dated April 25th, 1803, he writes: + +"I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoyed, and that I +may converse with my friends in Eternity, see visions, dream dreams, and +prophesy and speak parables, unobserved, and at liberty from the doubts +of other mortals, perhaps doubts proceeding from kindness, but doubts are +always pernicious, especially when we doubt our friends. Christ is very +decided on this point: 'He who is not with me is against me;' there is no +medium or middle state; and if a man is the enemy of my spiritual life, +while he pretends to be the friend of my corporeal, he is a real enemy; +but the man may be the friend of my spiritual life while he seems the +enemy of my corporeal, though not _vice versâ_." + +This enemy to Blake's spiritual life is certainly Hayley. + +He writes with unmistakable frankness of the Hermit of Eartham in a later +letter: + +"Mr. H. approves of my designs as little as he does of my poems, and I +have been forced to insist on his leaving me, in both, to my own +self-will; I am determined to be no longer pestered with his genteel +ignorance and polite disapprobation. I know myself both Poet and Painter, +and it is not his affected contempt that can move to anything but a more +assiduous pursuit of both arts. Indeed, by my late firmness I have brought +down his affected loftiness, and he begins to think I have some genius, as +if genius and assurance were the same thing! But his imbecile attempts to +depress me only deserve laughter." He goes on to say that he will +relinquish all engagements to design for Hayley, "unless altogether left +to my own judgement, as you, my dear friend, have always left me; for +which I shall never cease to honour and respect you." And for which, we +may add, posterity also has good reason to laud and acclaim Mr. Butts. + +Blake was not the man to be the creature of any patron, spending his time +and all his magnificent powers as the servant of another man's +brain--especially when that brain was Hayley's. + +If the engravings and designs done for his patron had earned him +thousands instead of a mere competence, such work could not have tempted +him from his chosen path of spiritual art. Finally, in 1803, he threw off +the yoke decisively, turned his back on patronage, and returned with his +faithful Kate to the liberty and poverty of rooms in South Molton Street, +London, after a three years' rural seclusion. Just before leaving Felpham +Blake became involved in a very disagreeable affair with a drunken soldier +named Schofield, which resulted in a trial for sedition. The soldier, who +was forcibly removed by Blake from his cottage garden, where he was +trespassing, trumped up in revenge a set of ridiculous charges against +him, saying he had used seditious language against the king and +government. In the practical difficulties that all this gave rise to, +Hayley came forward to Blake's assistance, and putting all the weight of +his local position and popularity on the artist's side, materially helped +him before and at the time of the trial. Although he had been thrown from +his horse and hurt a few days previously, he insisted on being present to +give evidence in his _protégé's_ favour, who was of course acquitted. +Warm-hearted Blake felt a generous inrush of the old affection for his +friend, and a deep sense of gratitude helped to re-establish the old +cordial relations between the two men. It must not be inferred from this, +however, that Blake had altered his opinion that Hayley was his spiritual +enemy. That, he held, Hayley had proved himself to be. But he now +recognized that it was not malignity, but deficiency of spiritual +knowledge and insight that had made him act as he did. It was the law of +his being, and Blake, having learned this through experience of his three +years' stay at Felpham, expected no more from him than his capacity +warranted, and gave him his dues, dwelling with gratitude on the fact that +Hayley was at least a true "corporeal friend." + +The stress and strain connected with the trial had a bad effect on Blake's +highly-sensitive nerves, and is painfully apparent in the writing of the +time. The time at Felpham, and the period that succeeded on his return to +London, have much light shed on them by the Note-book. The MS. book to +which reference has been made was a sort of safety valve, which Blake kept +ever at his elbow, and in which he wrote long dissertations on Art and +Religion--the "Public Address," the "Vision of the Last Judgment," and +many of the poems published under the title (which heads the Note-book +itself) of "Ideas of Good and Evil." Along with, and interspersed with +these connected and finished utterances, are splenetic epigrams, rude +rather than humorous caricature couplets, little scraps of unconsidered +verse written to illustrate some incident of the day, and drawings here, +there, and everywhere. The MS. Note-book is a very intimate part of Blake. +On its first page Messrs. Ellis and Yeats quote the inscription written by +Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who possessed it till his death: + +"I purchased this original MS. of Palmer, an attendant at the Antique +Gallery of the British Museum, on the 30th April, 1849. Palmer knew Blake +personally, and it was from the artist's wife that he had the present MS., +which he sold me for 10_s._ Among the sketches are one or two profiles of +Blake himself." Unfortunately it has now passed by purchase into the +possession of a collector at Boston, U.S.A. I say unfortunately, because +our own National Museum should have secured such a treasure, but its +present owner courteously lent it for a prolonged period to Messrs. Ellis +and Yeats, who have embodied the main part of it in their exhaustive and +most interesting work. The Note-book was deeply studied by Gilchrist, and +was one of Rossetti's dearest treasures, leaving its impress on his mind +and work. + +The work Blake did during the Felpham period included the designs and +engraving of animals to Hayley's "Ballads," some of the engravings for +"The Life of Cowper," and, above all, the writing of two long prophetic +books, the "Milton" and the "Jerusalem," which, however, he did not finish +till he had returned to London. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE PROCESSION OF THE PILGRIMS + + +Blake's course was now definitely chosen. He had turned his back on +patronage and voluntarily married poverty, like St. Francis, in order that +he might be free to work out his own poetic and artistic ideas without +reference to popularity, patronage, or pecuniary advantage. His wants and +Catherine's were simple indeed, and to pay for them, from week to week, +was all he desired. South Molton Street, in which they now took up their +abode, was closely shut in by streets and houses. There was no garden, no +summer-house or vine with pattering green leaves against the window as at +Lambeth,--no trees even to recall the natural beauties of Felpham. But +Blake seems to have been almost glad to be delivered from the agitating +beauty of the natural or "vegetative world," as he called it, which was to +him error and not truth--the visible shadow that darkened and hid +invisible and eternal ideas. Now indeed, with nothing to distract him, he +could open his eyes inward into the "World of Thought," into "Eternity," +which is imagination. Gilchrist's Life enables us to realize how he could +live in this imaginative world, and yet, at the same time, fulfil with +great practical ability such a work, for instance, as collecting material +for Hayley for the "Life of Romney," which the latter was now beginning. +The letters he wrote to Hayley at the time, which are all given in the +Life, are the letters of a kindly business-like man, intent on giving +only such information as will be useful. The good sense, the sanity, the +mediocrity (I had almost said) of these letters are a pledge of Blake's +ability to act and express himself as other men when he wished so to do. + + +[Illustration: FROM BLAIR'S "GRAVE": THE RE-UNION OF THE SOUL AND THE BODY + +Engraving by L. Schiavonetti after Blake's design. Published 1808] + + +Hayley was his good "corporeal friend," to whom he was grateful for +"corporeal acts" of kindness, and as such he treated him. + +In one of the letters alone there bursts forth a great full-throated shout +of joy, as it were, because he has suddenly achieved a great advance in +his art. As the passage gives valuable insight into his mind at the time, +I shall take liberty to quote it: + +"O glory! O delight! I have entirely reduced that spectrous Fiend to his +station, whose annoyance has been the ruin of my labours for the last +passed twenty years of my life. He is the enemy of conjugal love, and is +the Jupiter of the Greeks, an iron-hearted tyrant, the ruiner of ancient +Greece. I speak with perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which +has passed upon me. Nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him, I have +had twenty; thank God, I was not altogether a beast as he was; but I was a +slave bound in a mill among beasts and devils; these beasts and these +devils are now, together with myself, become children of light and +liberty, and my feet and my wife's feet are free from fetters.... + +"Suddenly on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of Pictures, +I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my youth, and which +has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by +window shutters. Consequently I can, with confidence, promise you ocular +demonstration of my altered state on the plates I am engraving after +Romney, whose spiritual aid has not a little conduced to my restoration to +the light of Art. O, the distress I have undergone, and my poor wife with +me; incessantly labouring and incessantly spoiling what I had done well. +Every one of my friends was astonished at my faults, and could not assign +a reason; they knew my industry and abstinence from every pleasure for the +sake of study, and yet--and yet--and yet there wanted proofs of industry +in my works. I thank God with entire confidence that it shall be so no +longer: he is become my servant who domineered over me, he is even as a +brother who was my enemy. Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm, or rather +madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a +pencil or graver into my hand, even as I used to be in my youth, and as I +have not been for twenty dark but very profitable years. I thank God that +I courageously pursued my course through darkness." + +All of which tense and highly-figurative language means that Blake had +suddenly received enlightenment on various technical methods from the +silent witness of Raphael's and Michael Angelo's and other masters' +achievement. He could never learn by verbal advice, precept or criticism, +but when shown great work, the artist in him dwelt on every line, +absorbing and assimilating its principles. The spectrous fiend to whom he +refers is, according to Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, his own "selfhood." He +held that every man contained in himself a devil and an angel, the devil +being the natural man, the angel the God in man. Of this idea of his more +hereafter. + +Blake's work, when done in the heat of his spirit, is always noble, +characteristic, and _largely, often wholly, right_ (I am speaking of the +execution, not the ideas expressed), but when "incessant labour" was +expended without the incessant reference to nature which an elaborate +technique demands, it is not wonderful that "incessant spoiling" should +have been the result. + +Now, indeed, he seems to have seen how it was with himself, and to have +gained a new mastery of material through studying the manner of other +men's work. + +In 1804 Blake brought out his "Jerusalem; the Emanation of the Giant +Albion," a poem which he told Mr. Butts was descriptive of the "spiritual +acts of his three years' slumber on the banks of Ocean." + +"Milton" was also produced in the same year. + +In 1805 Robert Hartley Cromek, whilom engraver, but now publisher and +printseller, "discovered" Blake in his self-chosen retirement, and +proposed giving him employment. The story of his treacherous dealings is +an evil one. + +Cromek, who had learnt engraving in the studio of Bartolozzi, found it +laborious and slow work, so exchanged its drudgery for the calling of a +publisher, but, having good taste but no capital, he was hard pressed +indeed to make both ends meet. + +One day a piece of luck came in his way. He paid a visit to Blake's +working and living room in South Molton Street. Many beautiful things were +to come into being in that room, but none more so than the drawings for +Blair's "Grave" which Blake had designed, intending to print and publish +them in the usual way. Cromek found them, and seized upon them, gloating. +He persuaded Blake to relinquish the idea of publishing them himself, and +to surrender the undertaking to Cromek as one more fitted to push them and +bring them before the notice of the public. + +Blake was very poor at the time. In an insulting letter written by Cromek +to Blake some two years later, he refers with contemptible want of feeling +and taste to this fact. "Your best work, the illustrations to the +'Grave,'" he says, "was produced when you and Mrs. Blake were reduced so +low as to be obliged to live on half a guinea a week!" + +Blake sold the twelve drawings to him for £1 10_s._ each, with the +assured verbal agreement that he was himself to engrave them for the +projected edition--a promise which of course entailed considerable further +payment for the work of engraving later on. + +Cromek in possession of the copyright conveniently forgot his promise. +Impregnated as he was with the fluent and graceful style of Bartolozzi's +school, Blake's manner of engraving seemed to him grim, austere and +archaic. He thought that the noble drawings translated by the hand of the +popular and graceful engraver, Lewis Schiavonetti, would insure the +success of the designs with the public as Blake could never have done were +he to have engraved them himself. + +It may be that there was truth in it. Some critics hold that the +illustrations to Blair's "Grave" have a suavity, a felicity superimposed +by the engraver on the stern and original work of Blake which was just +what was needed to render his work attractive to the public. To Blake's +true lovers, however, his own graver is the rightful interpreter of his +own drawings, and, whether Cromek were right or not in this critical +matter of taste, he was dishonest and mean to break the engagement on the +basis of which alone he had obtained the drawings. + +While Blake was looking forward with "anxious delight" to the engraving of +his designs, Cromek had other schemes afoot. He called often at South +Molton Street, hoping to pounce on some other work of genius which he +could turn into money for himself. He was arrested one day before a pencil +sketch of a new and hitherto untreated subject--the Procession of +Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. He tried to get Blake to make a finished +drawing of it, with a view of course to getting it out of the artist's +hands, and then having it engraved by someone else. Negotiations on this +basis failing, he gave Blake a commission (verbal again) to execute the +design in a finished picture and an engraving from it. On the strength of +this, Blake's friends circulated a subscription paper for the engraving, +and he himself set to work on the picture. Cromek, however, had not done. +He was in love with the subject. Sure of Blake's conception being +thoughtful and strong, but probably wishful that it might be invested with +a more earthly grace and interest than he would put upon it, he went to +Stothard and suggested the subject to him, suppressing all mention of +Blake. Probably he assisted the suggestion by hints as to its treatment +derived from what he had actually appreciated in Blake's conception. He +commissioned him to paint the picture for sixty guineas, an engraving from +which was to be done by Bromley, though Schiavonetti was eventually +substituted for him. + + +[Illustration: PILGRIMAGE TO CANTERBURY + +Engraving after Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrimage. Published October, 1817] + + +[Illustration: CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY PILGRIMS + +Engraved by Blake in 1810 after his own "fresco" of the Canterbury +Pilgrimage] + + +When Blake learned that Cromek denied having given him a commission, and +came to know that Stothard, his old friend, was to paint a picture on his +stolen idea, to supersede his own, his rage and indignation knew no +bounds, and he became bitterly estranged from Stothard, believing in his +haste "that all men are liars," and that this man had been a party to the +whole mean transaction. Gilchrist is almost sure that Stothard knew +nothing of Cromek's previous deal with Blake on the subject of the +Canterbury Pilgrimage. + +During 1806 Blake was moved to make some designs to Shakespeare which were +neither commissioned nor engraved. Judging from the one reproduced in the +Life,--"Hamlet and the Ghost of his Father,"--they must have been wild and +powerful indeed. He had always a profound reverence for, and joy in, +Shakespeare, whose works were among his favourite books. + +A strange and characteristic collection were those books which fed his +fiery imagination. Could we have glanced along the row, we should have +seen Shakespeare cheek by jowl with Lavater and Jacob Boehmen, while +Macpherson's "Ossian," Chatterton's "Rowley," and the "Visions" of +Emmanuel Swedenborg helped to fill in the ranks. Milton held perhaps the +most honoured place of all, while Ovid, St. Theresa's works, and De la +Motte Fouqué's "Sintram" were among the heterogeneous collection. Chaucer +was also cheerfully conspicuous, and, towards the close of Blake's life, +Dante's "Divine Comedy" came to join the silent company in the +bookshelves. + +In 1806 Blake became acquainted with a good and kindly man, Dr. Malkin, +Head Master of Bury Grammar School. He gave him a commission for the +frontispiece of Malkin's "Memorials of his Child," and in the preface +wrote an account of the childhood and youth of the designer. Ozias +Humphrey, the miniature painter, and a staunch friend of Blake, bought +many of his engraved books, and it was he who obtained a commission for +him from the Countess of Egremont to paint a picture elaborated from the +Blair drawing of the "Last Judgment." The paper called by the same name in +the MS. book is descriptive of this picture, and in its _intimité_ and +demonstration of Blake's bed-rock foundations of thought and artistic +principles, gives profound insight into his mind. + +These things occupied him during 1807. During that year Stothard's cabinet +picture was publicly exhibited, and drew thousands of gazers. Blake +doggedly continued to work at his own "Canterbury Pilgrimage," which he +wrought in a water-colour medium which he arbitrarily termed "fresco." It +was finished about the end of 1808. In the autumn of that year the twelve +beautiful engravings after his designs for Blair's "Grave" were produced +by Cromek, with a flowery introduction by Fuseli. The list of subscribers +for the book at two-and-a-half guineas a copy was so large--thanks to +Cromek's skilful manipulation--that the amount realized by its sale came +to £1,800. Of this Blake received twenty guineas and Schiavonetti about +£500. I cannot omit to mention that leave to dedicate to Queen Charlotte +having previously been obtained, Blake made a vignette drawing with some +grave and beautiful verses to accompany it, and sent it to Cromek as an +additional plate, asking the modest price of four guineas for it. + +The design and verses were returned with a long letter from Cromek, +closely packed with insults and slanders, and exhibiting a meanness too +contemptible for expression. At the end of the letter he thus refers to +the subject of the Pilgrimage, of which one would suppose he would be too +ashamed to speak: "Why did you so _furiously rage_ at the success of the +little picture of the Pilgrimage? Three thousand people have now _seen it +and have approved of it_. Believe me, yours is 'the voice of one crying in +the wilderness.' + +"You say the subject is _low_ and _contemptibly treated_. For his +excellent mode of treating the subject the poet has been admired for the +last four hundred years; the poor painter has not yet the advantage of +antiquity on his side, therefore with some people an apology may be +necessary for him. The conclusion of one of Squire Simpkins' letters to +his mother in the 'Bath Guide' will afford one. He speaks greatly to the +purpose: + + I very well know + Both my subject and verse is exceedingly low, + But if any _great critic_ finds fault with my letter, + _He has nothing to do but to send you a better_. + + "With much respect for your talents, + "I remain, Sir, + "Your real friend and well-wisher, + "R. H. CROMEK." + +Perhaps it was that last jeering taunt which determined Blake to show +_his_ "Canterbury Pilgrimage" to the public, and make it the occasion of a +little exhibition of his own. It was opened in May, 1809. Poor unworldly +Blake, enraged and baffled, was the last man to organize an undertaking of +this sort. Cromek could afford to laugh at the modest show on the first +floor of James Blake's shop at the corner of Broad Street, all +unadvertised and unpatronized as it was. + +The exhibition comprised, besides the "Pilgrimage," sixteen "Poetical and +Historical Inventions," ten "frescoes," and seven drawings--"a +collection," as Gilchrist remarks, "singularly remote from ordinary +sympathies or even ordinary apprehension." + +Few of the general public penetrated here, but Blake's friends, his few +buyers, and many contemporary artists probably went through the rooms with +no little curiosity. Seymour Kirkup--the discoverer of Giotto's portrait +of Dante in the Bargello,--and Henry Crabb Robinson were among the number +of those who went and purchased catalogues. With the catalogue were issued +subscription papers for the engraving of the "Canterbury Pilgrimage," +which, in spite of Cromek and Stothard, Blake intended to execute. + +Blake drew up a Descriptive Catalogue to interpret his pictures, and in it +gave free rein, unfortunately, to his personal antipathy to Stothard, but +he also expressed at some length, and with characteristic fire and +intemperance, his views on art. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was intensely +sympathetic with his artistic forerunner, says that the Descriptive +Catalogue, and the "Address to the Public," "abound in critical passages, +on painting and poetry, which must be ranked without reserve among the +very best things ever said on either subject." + +It may be remarked, however, with all respect and honour, that neither +Blake nor Rossetti were critics in any exact sense of the word. The +unprejudiced and scientific character of mind which analyses, classifies, +and lays bare with sharp dissecting knife the structure, bones, muscles, +heart, of an artistic creation, belonged to neither of them. The analytic +and synthetic qualities are seldom united in one mind. (Goethe recognized +this when he wrote, "I, being an artist, prefer that the principles +through which I work should be hidden from me.") Both Blake and Rossetti +leaped with unerring instinct and the artistic intuition at all noble and +right work, and loved it with passion, rather than appreciated it with +cold reason. Blake's affinities in art, for instance, especially as he +grew older, were much more catholic than it would be supposed. Although +the Descriptive Catalogue would induce us to believe that works of art +which he did not worship were loathed by him, this was only the case when +he was doing battle for certain cherished principles, and then he would +hit blindly to right and left in the heat of his partisanship. Mr. Samuel +Palmer spoke of evenings spent with him in his old age looking over +reproductions of the pictures of various masters, which Blake enjoyed +greatly, dwelling on whatever was beautiful and true in each. The +Catalogue and Address were written by him with a pen steeped in wormwood. +His attacks were mainly directed against the "Venetian and Flemish +demons," with their "infernal machine Chiaro Oscuro," and the "hellish +brownness" with which he says they and their school and modern followers +load their paintings. It is true that the English school of the day feared +colour, and gave a brown tone to nearly all its pictures, but probably +Blake had never seen good examples of the Venetians, whose chief glory is +that they "conceived colour heroically." He enunciated his own principle +in these words: "The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life, is +this: that the more distinct, sharp and wiry the bounding line, the more +perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the +evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and bungling." His mood was +exasperated, truculent, passionately prejudiced, though there is much here +of artistic insight and originality. It must be admitted that a great deal +is painful reading, but through all the unmeasured language one feels the +labouring, overstrained, noble, human heart, tormented beyond endurance. +He had been galled to this state of Titanic fury by a policy of calumny, +plagiarism, and neglect, used against him by the little souls, of what was +in many respects a little age, with no mercy and little intermission for +many years. + +Since the production of Blair's "Grave," he had been held up to public +ridicule as an artist, in a paper called the "Examiner," edited by Leigh +Hunt, and the occasion of this exhibition called forth another article in +its columns full of crass misunderstanding of his aims and the superior +sneers of a self-satisfied and material-minded writer. In it he was termed +"an unfortunate lunatic whose personal unoffensiveness secures him from +confinement." + +But the "most unkindest cut of all" had been Cromek's, in making his own +friend of thirty years' standing the supplanter of his work, the thief of +his idea. + +All these things had inflamed his tremulous and excitable nerves to a +point beyond self-control. + +Material disagreements of the kind I have related had a sad effect on him, +and drove him to an expression of bitterness very difficult to reconcile +with the benign, gentle and courteous nature to which all his friends and +acquaintances have affectionately testified. There is no doubt that during +the period of middle life he developed a hard and violent strain which did +not mix with, diminish, or distemper the fine and beautiful qualities of +his heart and spirit, but shot through them like a barbed wire among a +tangle of honeysuckle. In great part, it was the irritation of capricious +and highly-strung nerves, the tension of an overheated and excitable +brain, and not a quality of the mind or character at all. + +The expression of this condition of Blake's must, therefore, be taken as +an undisciplined and wilfully exaggerated statement of his intellectual +convictions, with a deep note of truth at the bottom. It seems strange +that in the matter of the "Pilgrimage" he did not go straight to Stothard +and invite him to clear himself of the suspicions with which he regarded +him. But like all guileless people, and perhaps especially those of the +artistic temperament, when once they have been deceived they find it easy +to believe that all the world is in league against them. + +Before people who were not intimate, who were, in fact, antipathetic to +him, Blake would abuse Stothard roundly and criticise him wantonly. But to +the immediate circle of his personal friends or sympathisers--those who, +knowing how he had suffered, and how black the case looked for Stothard, +would have understood anything he might have said,--he maintained complete +silence on the subject of the "Pilgrimage," and the name of the popular +artist was mentioned without comment and listened to in grave silence by +him. Once, many years after, he met Stothard at a dinner, and went up to +him impulsively with outstretched hand. It was refused with coldness. +Another time, hearing that Stothard was ill, Blake's heart softened and +warmed to the old friend, and he rushed off impetuously to call and make +up the quarrel in which he ever believed Stothard to have been the +aggressor. But Stothard would not receive him, desired no reconciliation. + +In the year 1808 Blake exhibited, for the fifth and last time, at the +Royal Academy, two pictures in "fresco," "Christ in the Sepulchre guarded +by Angels," and "Jacob's Dream." The engraving of Blake's "Canterbury +Pilgrimage" was issued in October, 1810. + +It was altogether unadvertised and unheralded, and the public held itself +coldly aloof, neither admiring nor buying. The original picture was taken +by the ever-faithful Mr. Butts. Stothard's picture was not finished +engraving till a year or two later, for adverse fortunes overtook it. +Lewis Schiavonetti died in the middle of the work, and another hand had to +finish it. Notwithstanding all of which misadventures, it was one of the +most popular engravings ever issued. + +We shall compare the two compositions in a succeeding chapter. + + +[Illustration: SATAN POURING THE PLAGUE OF BOILS ON JOB + +Water-colour drawing. Reproduced by kind permission of Sir Charles Dilke] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +DECLINING YEARS + + +Seventeen years of quiet productiveness and unceasing work, marked by the +increasing neglect of the world, were passed by Blake at 17, South Molton +Street. + +When finally abandoned by the public to the deep solitude which he created +for himself in the midst of the roar of the city, the years are a record +of much peaceful labour, of beautiful and strange work, produced as the +result of his spiritual meditations and visions. + +"That he should do great things for small wages," writes Mr. Swinburne, +"was a condition of his life," and the poverty which had knocked at his +door for almost half a century, now raised the latch and came in, to live +with the Blakes as accustomed house-mate to the end. Mrs. Blake had often +to remind him of the bare larder and purse by setting an empty plate +before him, when he turned to his task-work of engraving to earn the +needful money whereby they might live. + +In the last years of his life Blake said significantly to Crabb Robinson, +"I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a +man has, is so much taken from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing +for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite +happy." And so indeed he was. + +But he wrote in the Note-book these lines also, indicative of the +loneliness and misunderstanding of his whole life: + + The Angel who presided at my birth, + Said, "Little creature formed for joy and mirth, + Go, Love, without the help of anything on earth." + +The struggle between himself and the world being over, and his intractable +genius relegated by the influential and great persons of his age to a +limbo of neglect and contempt, then did he reach out his hands as to a +friend, and pulled Poverty across the threshold; and stretching his limbs +and shaking back his gray old head in relief and content, he settled in to +the unhindered and undistracted contemplation of "those things which +really are"--the eternal inner world of the imagination. + +"They pity me," Blake said of Sir Thomas Lawrence and other popular +artists of the day, "but 'tis they are the just objects of pity. I possess +my visions and peace. They have bartered their birthright for a mess of +pottage." + +Gradually the ranks of Blake's old friends were thinned till but two +remained, Fuseli and Flaxman, both of whom, however, died before him. + +Johnson the bookseller died in 1809, in 1810 Ozias Humphrey; Mr. Butts, +always a staunch friend, had no room in his house for more pictures, and +fell off as a buyer; Hayley and Blake had long ceased to have a thought in +common. Flaxman still continued to find engraving to be done by Blake, +being determined that he should at least have money enough to live. +Designing, which he would so far rather have done, was out of Flaxman's +power to give, for the public had now sedulously turned its back on Blake. +Much of this part of his life seems to have been lived in drudgery, but +always cheerfully and happily. He was too poor to afford the outlay +necessary for printing and producing his books in the old wonderful way, +and often made unsuccessful applications to regular publishers. "Well, it +is published elsewhere," he would say quietly, "and beautifully bound." + +Our artist had never been sympathetic to the decadent age of crumbling +institutions and fallow literary and intellectual life that the last part +of the eighteenth century presented; and now in the first years of a new +century, a generation of new-born song, of enthusiastic lovers of liberty, +of strong original and romantic minds, was to supplant the old artificial, +social and literary ideals. Blake felt the pristine thrills of the great +new birth in the poetry of Wordsworth, introduced to him by Mr. Crabb +Robinson, and also in personal acquaintance with Coleridge, a genius +somewhat akin to himself. + +Mr. George Cumberland introduced Blake in 1818 to John Linnell, afterwards +held high in honour and renown as one of England's greatest landscape +painters. At that time he painted portraits for a living, and engraved +them afterwards. In this work he got Blake to help him, and it was through +him that the latter became acquainted with a younger generation of +artists, among whom he soon made many congenial friends. Of John Linnell +it must be recorded, that from this time forth till Blake's death, he +occupied a quite unique relation to him, constituting himself the old +man's chief stay and solace, and according him the attentions and the +admiring love given by a son to a beloved father. + +A new circle of friends and enthusiastic admirers, very young men for the +most part, rose up around Blake, whose hearts, expanding in unison with +the awakening life of the age, recognized in him a brother, a teacher, and +inspired prophet. To them he showed his benign and childlike side, to them +he talked, not in the old dogmatic sledge-hammer fashion, but in a spirit +of rhapsodic revelation, of peaceful and joyous wisdom. + +As the years went by, a new fellowship with mankind, a large toleration +and deep tenderness, bore golden fruit in his intercourse with this +favoured band of young friends and disciples. As Walter Pater wrote of +Michael Angelo, so might it be said of Blake, "This man, because the Gods +loved him, lingered on to be of immense patriarchal age, till the +sweetness it had taken so long to secrete in him was found at last. Out of +the strong came forth sweetness, _ex forti dulcedo_." + +Among the new friends were John Varley, the father of English +water-colours, as he has been affectionately termed, Richter and Holmes, +both leaders of the new school. These men were the forerunners of Turner, +Copley-Fielding, De Wint, Cotman, Prout, David Cox and William Hunt, and +though in these days they are little remembered, and the glory of them has +been eclipsed by their great successors, their somewhat timid and delicate +work in South Kensington Museum will repay a visit and establish their +pioneer claims to our regard. + +It was for John Varley that Blake drew the celebrated visionary heads, the +only work of his with which he is associated by many people. Varley was by +way of being an astrologer, and took the deepest interest in the occult +and the spiritualistic. Blake's talk of visions, of the actual appearances +vouchsafed him from the other world, had a significance to Varley's +matter-of-fact mind much more vulgar and material than he intended. + +Our artist had cultivated imagination till it became vision, and what he +thought, that he saw, for, as Mr. Smetham wrote, "thought crystallized +itself sharply into vision with him." So that when his friend asked him to +draw the portraits of men long dead and gone, such as Edward III, William +Wallace, Richard I, Wat Tyler, or unknown personages, such as "the man who +built the Pyramids," or "the man who taught Mr. B. painting in his +dreams," and (most remarkable of all!) "the Ghost of a Flea," Blake had +but to command his visionary faculty and summon before his gaze the +desired sitters. The one which has been the most talked about is the Ghost +of a Flea, and Varley gives the following description of the manner in +which it sat for its portrait: "This spirit visited his (Blake's) +imagination in such a figure as he never anticipated in an insect. As I +was anxious to make the most correct investigation in my power of the +truth of these visions, on hearing of this spiritual apparition of a flea, +I asked him if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he saw. He +instantly said, 'I see him now before me.' I therefore gave him paper and +a pencil with which he drew the portrait.... I felt convinced by his mode +of proceeding that he had a real image before him; for he left off and +began on another part of the paper to make a separate drawing of the mouth +of the flea, which, the spirit having opened, he was prevented from +proceeding with the first sketch till he had closed it." + +Various explanations of these portraits of "spectres" (as Varley has it) +have been put forward. Messrs. Ellis and Yeats write of them, "All are +pictorial expressions of personality, pictorial opinions, drawn, as Blake +believed, from influences set going by the character of the men, and +permanently affecting the atmosphere, finer than air or ether, into which +his imagination looked for their lineaments." + +A large and curious collection of these heads, executed by Blake at +nocturnal sittings at Varley's house, is still in existence, but not in +the British Museum, unfortunately. They mostly bear the date, August, +1820. + +In 1820 Blake illustrated Thornton's "Virgil's Pastorals." These, along +with his other art-work, will be considered in a later portion of this +book. They are the only woodcuts Blake ever made, and are unique, strong +and suggestive as anything he ever did. In the same year he made a drawing +of Laocoon, to illustrate an article in Rees' "Cyclopaedia" (to such +hack-work as this he was frequently reduced to replenish the household +purse). He went to the Academy Schools, and took his place humbly among +the young men to draw from the cast of Laocoon there. + +"What! you heer, Meesther Blake," said his old friend Fuseli; "we ought to +come and learn of you, not you of us." + +In 1821 Blake moved to No. 3, Fountain Court, in the Temple, his last +dwelling-place on earth. It was at that time an old-fashioned respectable +court, very quiet, though removed but a few paces from the bustling +Strand. The two rooms on the first floor which the Blakes inhabited have +been more graphically described than any other of Blake's homes. The front +room had its walls covered with his pictures and served as a reception +room for his friends, while the back room was living room, kitchen, +sleeping apartment and studio all in one. One of his friends wrote, "There +was a strange expansion and sensation of freedom in those two rooms, +_very_ seldom felt elsewhere"; while another, speaking of them to Blake's +biographer Gilchrist, exclaimed, "Ah! that divine window!" It was there +that Blake's working table was set, with a print of Albrecht Dürer's +"Melancholia" beside it; and between a gap in the houses could be seen the +river, with its endless suggestions, memories and "spiritual +correspondences." + +It is to the credit of the Royal Academy that in the year after Blake's +last move, 1822, a grant of £25 was given to this least popular but +greatest of her children. + +Allan Cunningham and the fastidious Crabb Robinson give the impression +that Blake lived in squalor at the end, but the insinuation is refuted by +all those who knew him well. Says one, "I never look upon him as an +unfortunate man of genius. He knew every great man of his day, and had +enough"; while one of the most attached of his friends and disciples (a +young artist of the band I have mentioned, who attained success as a +painter of "poetic landscape," Mr. Samuel Palmer) wrote to Gilchrist, "No, +certainly,--whatever was in Blake's house, there was no squalor. Himself, +his wife and his rooms, were clean and orderly; everything was in its +place. His delightful working corner had its implements ready, tempting to +the hand. The millionaire's upholsterer can furnish no enrichments like +those of Blake's enchanted rooms." + +It would seem that Blake, having won "those just rights as an artist and a +man" for which he had striven with Hayley and Cromek in the old days, and +having now established his claim to live as he pleased in honourable +poverty for the sake of the imaginative life, gained a tardy recognition +and respect among the intellectual spirits of the time during his last +years. One of the friendly acquaintances of this period was Thomas +Griffiths Wainwright, a strange character of great artistic capacity and +sensibilities, and yet destined to be a secret poisoner and murderer. I +wonder if Blake was thinking of him when he said in one of his +conversations with Crabb Robinson, "I have never known a very bad man who +had not something very good in him." Palmer Samuel has given a +never-to-be-forgotten picture of Blake at the Academy looking at a picture +of Wainwright's. + +"While so many moments better worthy to remain are fled," wrote Palmer, +"the caprice of memory presents me with the image of Blake looking up at +Wainwright's picture; Blake in his plain black suit and _rather_ +broad-brimmed but not quakerish hat, standing so quietly among all the +dressed-up, rustling, swelling people, and myself thinking, 'How little +you know _who_ is among you!'" These few graphic and reverential words +touch the heart by their simple directness and love, for to Samuel Palmer, +Blake was "the Master." The names of Frederick Tatham the elder, and his +son the sculptor must be appended to the tale of Blake's friends; Edward +Calvert, who used to go long walks with Blake, made memorable by high +conversation; F. O. Finch, a member of the old Water Colour Society; and +the distinguished painter Richmond, who was a mere boy when he fell under +the spell of the inspired old man. Blake showed this group of young men +the most fatherly kindness, encouraged them to appeal to him for advice +and counsel, and gathered them around him and talked to them simply, +directly and earnestly, of his high and spiritual views on life and art. +He poured his noble enthusiasm and other-worldliness into receptive +hearts, and his words bore fruit in their works in after life. For this +group learned from Blake that Art must express the spirit, and must +interpret natural phenomena esoterically. Richmond tells the following +characteristic story of how once, "finding his invention flag during a +whole fortnight, he went to Blake, as was his wont, for some advice and +comfort. He found him sitting at tea with his wife. He related his +distress: how he felt deserted by the power of invention. To his +astonishment, Blake turned to his wife suddenly and said, 'It is just so +with us, is it not, for weeks together when the visions forsake us? What +do we do then, Kate?' 'We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake.'" + +To these earnest young men Blake was as the prophet Ezekiel, and the home +in Fountain Court got to be called by them significantly enough, "The +House of the Interpreter." + + +[Illustration: BLAKE'S LIVING-ROOM AND DEATH-ROOM IN FOUNTAIN COURT + +Reproduced from the sketch by Mr. Frederic J. Shields, kindly lent by the +artist] + + +Mr. Frederick Shields (who, like Blake and many other great artists, +will doubtless be honoured as he deserves to be when nothing further can +touch him, and this world may not lay at his living feet its due meed of +recognition and gratitude,) made a sketch of the sombre little living room +in Fountain Court. His friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti was so profoundly +touched on seeing it that he eased his heart in a sonnet: + + This is the place. Even here the dauntless soul, + The unflinching hand, wrought on; till in that nook, + As on that very bed, his life partook + New birth and passed. Yon river's dusky shoal, + Whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll, + Faced his work window, whence his eyes would stare, + Thought wandering, unto nought that met them there, + But to the unfettered irreversible goal. + + This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud + Of his soul writ and limned; this other one, + His true wife's charge, full oft to their abode + Yielded for daily bread, the martyr's stone, + Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone, + The words now home-speech of the mouth of God. + +The house in Fountain Court has been pulled down lately. The footprints of +the great and gentle soul in his passage through this world to the +"unfettered irreversible goal" have almost all disappeared in the dust and +scurry of the last century. We can still think of him, and of those long +rapt mornings he spent in our glorious Abbey. Full as it is--pent up and +overflowing--with the associations of centuries, it will henceforth hold +this one more--Blake worked there, Blake dreamed there, Blake caught +inspiration from the enchanted forests of its aisles. + +We may think of him, too, as standing in the Diploma Gallery of Burlington +House, gazing with all his flaming spirit in his eyes at Marco d'Oggione's +beautiful copy of Da Vinci's "Last Supper." Of the apostles he said, +"Every one of them save Judas looks as if he had conquered the natural +man." + +Mr. Linnell, always during this period Blake's truest, closest friend, +introduced him to a rich and cultivated gentleman, a collector of pictures +of the German school, a Mr. Aders, at whose table Blake met Crabb Robinson +and Coleridge. Crabb Robinson thus describes our artist's appearance: "He +has a most interesting appearance. He is now old--sixty-eight--pale, with +a Socratic countenance, and an expression of great sweetness, though with +something of languor about it, except when animated, and then he has about +him an air of inspiration." Lamb was an habitué at the house also. +Gotzenburger, the German painter, met Blake at Mr. Aders, and he declared +on his return to Germany that he saw but three men of genius in +England--Coleridge, Flaxman and Blake, and the greatest of these was +Blake. + +Much happy time was spent by the old man among the Linnell family at the +painter's house, Collins Farm, at North End, Hampstead. Here he often went +of a Saturday, and was always welcomed with keen delight by the children +and glad affection by their parents. Mrs. Linnell sang his favourite +Scotch songs to him, John Linnell talked to him of art and listened +appreciatively to his wild poetic conversation. The latter made happy the +last few years of his life by a commission to engrave a set of plates +after water-colour drawings, already executed, illustrating the Book of +Job. + +The congeniality of this task, which was to result in the crowning +achievement of his life, fired Blake to put his whole soul into the +monumental inventions. Linnell also commissioned him to make a series of +drawings from the "Divine Comedy." It is interesting to note that at +sixty-seven Blake set to work and learned Italian, in order to read his +author in the original. His health had long been failing, and before the +drawings were finished Death came to him like a friend who loved him, and +took him from this cold and unsympathetic world (where, however, he had +been strangely happy) to that other one, with which he had always had so +close and mystical a communion. The review of his life, from a worldly +point of view, is of one whose means were painfully straitened, whose +genius was baffled and powers crippled, by poverty and want of +encouragement; to whom the world's acknowledgement was lacking, and the +fame of the painter and poet denied. + +His own assessment of life, however, was very different. Gilchrist relates +that a rich and influential lady (Mrs. Aders?) brought her little +golden-haired daughter to see him. When this child was old she recalled +the strangeness of the words said to her, a radiant spoilt child of +fortune, by the poor shabby old man: "May God make this world as beautiful +to you, my child, as it has been to me!" he said, stroking her golden +curls. + +I cannot forbear to quote from Gilchrist the passage which describes his +death. + +"The final leave-taking came which he had so often seen in vision; so +often and with such child-like simple faith sung and designed. With the +same intense high feeling he had depicted the 'Death of the Righteous +Man,' he enacted it, serenely, joyously; for life and design and song were +with him all pitched in one key, different expressions of one reality. No +dissonances there! It happened on a Sunday, the 12th of August, 1827, +nearly three months before completion of his seventieth year. On the day +of his death ... he composed and uttered songs to his Maker so sweetly to +the ear of his Catherine, that, when she stood to hear him, he, looking +upon her most affectionately, said, 'My beloved! they are not _mine_! No! +they are _not_ mine.'" + +The last things Blake did were to execute and colour the design of the +"Ancient of Days" from the Europe for the young Mr. Tatham. When that was +done, "his glance fell on his loving Kate.... As his eyes rested on the +once-graceful form, thought of all she had been to him in these years +filled the poet-artist's mind. "Stay," he cried, "keep as you are! _you_ +have been ever an angel to me; I will draw you." And he made what Mr. +Tatham describes as "a phrenzied sketch of some power, highly interesting, +but not like." + +In that plain back room where he had worked so contentedly he closed his +eyes on this world, about six of a summer evening, to open them on the +glorious visions of the next. Those beloved nervous hands which Mrs. Blake +said she had never once seen idle, were laid to rest at last in the cold +sleep of death. + +The year of Blake's death, 1827, was that of Beethoven's. Of both of them +it may be said that they were but strangers and sojourners here, and the +language they spoke was the language of a far country. Catherine, the +devoted wife, only survived her husband four years, during the whole of +which time she felt his spiritual presence close to her. Blake, though so +poor, left no single debt, and his MSS., pictures, and printed books +realized sufficient to keep Mrs. Blake in comfort for those few years. +John Linnell and Tatham piously cared for and tended their lost leader's +widow. She died as Blake died, joyfully, and her body was laid to rest +beside his in Bunhill Fields. There is no sign to-day to show where those +graves lie, but it is as well. + +"The vegetative earth" has absorbed the two dear bodies that the spirits +of William Blake and his wife may shine the clearer; their bright radiance +glimmers through the century like a guiding star, to lead men's thoughts +out into the endless vistas of the infinite life which transcends our +present limited consciousness. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS + + +It seems to me that it would be quite vain and useless to go on to a +review of Blake's art, and, incidentally, his poetry, without a +preliminary examination--as concise as may be--of the fundamental +religious and intellectual conceptions which made him the man he was, and +gave him so strange and subjective a point of view. Blake is no ordinary +painter, whose art-work is the only key to his inner life or to his +perceptions of beauty in the natural world. + +He is an artist and a poet of the highest spiritual order, but he is also +a mystic. Messrs. Ellis and Yeats tell us that his rank as a mystic +entitles him to far more admiration and patient study than any claims he +may have as a mere painter and poet! Be that as it may (and some of us +cannot but hold the artist as the most glorious manifestation of the +divine on this earth!), it is certainly necessary to apprehend Blake the +mystic before we can enter into the spirit of Blake the artist. + +His was a strange religious creed. It is evident that in early life he +obtained somehow or other many of the works of the great mystics and +studied them with passionate attention. Among them Swedenborg (whom, +however, he frequently criticised harshly) and Jacob Boehmen, the +wonderful shoemaker of the sixteenth century, seem to have exerted the +most lasting influence on his mind. + +Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences--the theory that natural +phenomena actually represent, or rather shadow, unseen spiritual +conditions and existence--attracted Blake at first reading, and became so +much a part of his mental fibre that one feels certain he would have +eventually fought his intellectual way out into this channel of thought +had Swedenborg never written. Nature seemed to Blake but the confused and +vague copy of something definite and perfect in "Imagination" or "Spirit." +"All things exist in the human imagination," and "in every bosom a +universe expands," he wrote, and in the human imagination and its reverend +preservation and cultivation lay man's only source of divine illumination, +he believed. + +"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man +as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things +through narrow chinks in his cavern," are illuminating words of his. +Blake's whole effort in life seemed to be the cleansing and spiritualizing +of the portals of the senses that he might see and hear and receive as +much of the infinite spirit as his humanity could hold. + +The mission which he put clearly before him always, he expressed in these +words in his prophetic poem of "Jerusalem": + + I rest not from my great task + To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the Immortal Eyes + Of Man inwards; into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity + Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the Human Imagination. + +No man ever sought more gallantly to batter down the walls of materialism +which were closing round the souls of men, to let in the sweet breath of +Spirit, and to unveil the Vision of the Universal Life. The immemorial +struggle between the body and the soul of man was never lost sight of by +him, though he sometimes seems to deny it, and his letters to Butts from +Felpham show something of his acute consciousness of the difficulty of +subduing his spectre or "selfhood." "Nature and religion," he announces +passionately, "are the fetters of Life." The orthodox narrow unspiritual +religion of his time and all times was repugnant to Blake, and aroused all +his fiery combative qualities. It seemed to him to be as actually a fetter +to the spirit as the carnal nature of man. Religion was to him a matter of +intuition, and not a question of creed or dogma at all. He gives a picture +of ordinary religious conceptions in the poem called the "Everlasting +Gospel": + + The vision of Christ that thou dost see + Is my vision's greatest enemy. + Thine is the friend of all mankind; + Mine speaks in parables to the blind. + Thine loves the same world that mine hates, + Thy heaven-doors are my hell-gates. + Socrates taught what Miletus + Loathed as a nation's bitterest curse; + And Caiaphas was, in his own mind, + A benefactor to mankind. + Both read the Bible day and night; + But thou read'st black where I read white. + +The last line is very significant of Blake. The world which made so decent +and respectable a thing out of Christianity, which called success and +opportunism the favour of God, and hailed the Prince of this world by the +name of Christ, excited Blake's utmost antagonism. He announced definite +counter doctrines on his part, and advocated in his vehemence, almost as +partial a view of things, as in their own way, did the materialists of his +time. "La vérité est dans une nuance," Renan has declared, but the swing +of the pendulum of opinion must alternate from one extreme to the other +before the precise "nuance" can be determined. Blake's noble but often +impractical views have yet a practical utility, for only through a +knowledge of the extreme, can the mean be discriminated. Of his own +personal religion it might be said that certain fantastic and strange +tenets he _chose_ to believe because they pleased him, as we may choose to +believe in this or that section of the Catholic Church; but the most +quintessential, intimate, and spiritual of his views were not beliefs at +all, but simply and purely knowledge. He _knew_, by an intuition beyond +reason, things outside the ken of ordinary men. + +The deep melodies of the super-sensible universe reverberated through his +soul, and he could never therefore think much of the hum and clamour of +this material world. From this intuitive and rapt knowledge of the mystic +there is no appeal, for it transcends human experience, and when Blake had +it, he was prophet (teller of hidden things) indeed. But when he chose to +believe and assert complex and sometimes contradictory doctrines, the +affair is different, and we may give or withhold our intellectual sympathy +as we will. In any case the spiritual and unorthodox creed which was the +lamp of truth to this beautiful soul is worthy of deep reverence, but I +cannot altogether agree with Messrs. Ellis and Yeats that a _consistent_ +basis of mysticism underlies Blake's writings. Even a system of mystic +philosophy requires to be stated comprehensibly and in a recognizable +literary form, and the prophetic books (in which the greater part of +Blake's views are expressed) have no form nor sequence, and are as chaotic +and dim as dreams. Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, it is true, have constructed +an elaborate, imaginative and very coherent thought-structure out of +Blake's prophetic writings, but owing to the looseness, confusion and +unintelligible character of the greater part of the symbolic books +themselves, the deftly woven web of mysticism which they present to us as +Blake's does not carry conviction with it. It is suggestive, deeply +sympathetic with Blake--sometimes radiantly illuminating--but seems an +independent treatise rather than an exposition. Deeply as all students of +Blake must feel themselves indebted to Messrs. Ellis and Yeats for their +learned work, and the real help it has afforded to a clearer view of his +unique personality, I cannot but think that every man will--nay +_must_--interpret Blake for himself. He was too erratic, too emotional, +too much the artist, the apostle of discernment and the enemy of reason +and science, to have constructed the closely-reasoned, +carefully-articulated system of thought which they describe so +graphically. Blake was an intuitive mystic, not a systematic or learned +one. However, if Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have appreciated Blake's +mysticism, in all its strange convolutions and cloudy gyrations, they have +done so not by following his expressed thoughts but by stating from a +sympathetic insight denied to others, what he himself left unexpressed. +This does not materially concern the student of Blake's art and poetry, +but it _does_ deeply concern them that they should ascertain the _main_ +opinions which we know he held and the nature of the spiritual insight +that obviously moulded his intellect, and hence his art. + +He had a startlingly naïve and original mental perspective, and he +focussed profound and virgin thought on Life, Spirit and Art. Virgin +thought it was indeed, for tradition had little hold on him, and the +social, political and intellectual movements of his time passed by him, +washing round the rock on which he sat isolated, but leaving him almost +untouched by their influence and atmosphere. He was never swept into the +current of contemporary life, but was as removed from the London of his +time as if his rooms had been an Alpine tower of silence, instead of being +in the very heart and turmoil of the city. + +He belonged to no particular age. We could never think of him, for +instance, like Rossetti or William Morris, as an exile from the middle +ages who had fallen upon an uncongenial nineteenth century. He lived apart +in a world of spirit, and concerned himself with the great elementary +problems of all ages, bringing none of the bias or characteristic mental +hamper of his generation to bear upon these considerations. His art +necessarily ranges in the same primeval world, not yet thoroughly removed +from chaos. + +Mr. Swinburne, in his eloquent critical essay on Blake, finds him largely +pantheistic in his views. There is something in Blake of the rapt +indifference to externals, found in the Buddhist. + +Here is a characteristic assertion of his: + +"God is in the lowest effects as well as in the highest causes. He is +become a worm that he may nourish the weak. For let it be remembered that +creation is God descending according to the weakness of man: our Lord is +the Word of God, and everything on earth is the Word of God, and in its +essence is _God_." Here certainly speaks the pantheist. + +From the study of Blake's writings the following points--and they are +important to our future understanding of his art-work--stand out clearly +defined. He believed in a great permeating unconditioned spirit--God--of +whose nature men also partake, but subjected to the conditions and moral +nature which result from sexual and generative humanity. And beside the +unnameable supreme God there is another God, the creator Urizen, who is a +sort of divine demon. He it is who has divided humanity into sexes, and +inclosed the universal soul in separate bodies, and set up a code of +morals which bears no relation to the supreme God, Who being altogether +removed from, and above, the generative nature of man, does not Himself +conform to "laws of restriction and forbidding." + +Urizen, who imprisons and torments conditioned humanity, is somehow +subduable by this same humanity of his own invention, and Christ, the +perfect man filled as full as may be with the Divine Spirit (for "a cup +may not contain more than its capaciousness"), rises in the hearts of +humanity, and effects its freedom, by aspiring past the Creator, to the +Altogether Divine, and uniting with it. + +Jehovah addressing Christ, as the highest type and flower of humanity, +says to him, in the poem called the "Everlasting Gospel": + + If thou humblest thyself thou humblest me. + Thou art a man: God is no more: + Thine own humanity learn to adore, + For that is my spirit of life. + +This makes us think of Blake's follower, Walt Whitman, who in the same +sort of turgid and chaotic poetry in which Blake wrote the prophetic +books, but with no mystic clouds to shroud the meaning, has consistently +developed this thought: "One's self I sing, a simple separate person," and +"none has begun to think how divine he himself is," etc. + +In Blake's conversations with Crabb Robinson, this mystic view of Christ +is very apparent. "On my asking," writes Mr. Robinson, "in what light he +viewed the great questions of the duty of Jesus," he said, "He is the only +God. But then," he added, "and so am I, and so are you." + +Keeping this point in view,--Blake's belief in the identity of the Spirit +of God behind all phenomena, the homogeneous character of the great +creative Energy or Imagination expressing Itself through various forms and +organisms,--another extract from Crabb Robinson's diary will help us still +nearer home to Blake's point of view. He writes: "In the same tone, he +said repeatedly, 'The Spirit told me.' I took occasion to say, 'You +express yourself as Socrates used to do. What resemblance do you suppose +there is between your spirit and his?' 'The same as between our +countenances.' He paused and added, 'I was Socrates,' and then, as if +correcting himself, 'a sort of brother. I must have had conversations with +him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having +been with both of them.' I suggested on philosophic grounds the +impossibility of supposing an immortal being created an _a parte post_ +without an _a parte ante_. His eye brightened at this, and he fully +concurred with me. 'To be sure, it is impossible. We are all co-existent +with God, members of the Divine Body. We are all partakers of the Divine +Nature.'" + +The latter words seem as ordinary and orthodox as on first reading his +assertion that he was Socrates seems wild and mad. But all Blake really +meant (and I think Crabb Robinson only half took his meaning) was, that +the vegetative universe being a mere shadow, so are the accidents of +personality, the age one is born into, the organic form which incloses the +spirit. So his personality and that of Socrates, their imprisonment in the +"vegetative" life were differences of no account, being transitory. But he +and Socrates were one (or at least related) at the point where their +spirits (the eternal verity) touched, and melted each into the other. + +He understood the Bible in its spiritual sense. As to the natural sense, +"Voltaire was commissioned by God to expose that. I have had much +intercourse with Voltaire, and he said to me, 'I blasphemed the Son of +Man, and it shall be forgiven me, but they (the enemies of Voltaire) +blasphemed the Holy Ghost in me, and it shall not be forgiven them.'" This +affords an instance of the manner in which Blake intuitively probed +beneath the appearance, and divined the spirit beneath, discarding the +fact or body with which it clothed itself. Another characteristic opinion +of Blake's, and one that moulded much of his work, is the following: + +"Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason +and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to human existence. From these +contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the +passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active, springing from Energy. Good +is Heaven, Evil is Hell." + +"All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors: + +"1. That man has two existing principles, viz., a Body and a Soul. + +"2. That energy, called evil, is alone from the body, and that Heaven, +called Good, is alone from the soul. + +"3. That God will torment man in Eternity for following his energies. But +the following contraries are true: + +"1. Man has no Body distinct from Soul, for that called Body is a portion +of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this +age. + +"2. Energy is the only life, and is from the body, and reason is the bound +or outward circumference of energy. + +"3. Energy is eternal delight." + +These postulates form links in a chain of thought, another progression of +which is developed in "Jerusalem." Blake writes: "There is a limit of +opaqueness and a limit of contraction in every individual man, and the +limit of opaqueness is called Satan, and the limit of contraction is +called Adam. But there is no limit of expansion, there is no limit of +translucence in the bosom of man for ever from eternity to eternity." +Certainly there was no limit in his own bosom, and in vision he expanded +away from his own "ego" and merged in the universal life, the +all-pervading Spirit. Opaqueness and contraction were the only forms of +evil he recognized, and these are negative rather than active qualities. + +Indeed, Blake often seems to deny the existence of sin at all. Again +referring to the invaluable record that Crabb Robinson has left of +Blake--I quote always from Messrs. Ellis and Yeats' complete reprint of +the part of the diary referring to him--"He allowed, indeed, that there +are errors, mistakes, etc., and if these be evil, then there is evil. But +these are only negations. He denied that the natural world is anything. It +is all nothing, and Satan's empire is the empire of nothing." + +In another place he writes: "Negations are not contraries. Contraries +exist. But negations exist not; nor shall they ever be organized for ever +and ever." Contraries, 'the marriage of Heaven and Hell,' seemed necessary +and right to him, and the urge and recoil natural correlatives. + +The great strife with Blake was always that between reason and +imagination, experience and spiritual discernment. + +The greater part of humanity seemed to him to see _with_ the natural eye +natural phenomena only. This was accordingly opaque to them, and did not +let through the light of the Universal Spirit or Imagination, seen with +which alone it was beautiful, as being then the symbol of something +immeasureably greater than itself. Locke and Newton, the men of "single +vision" as he called them, were the types of this part of humanity. He +would fain have had men look _through_ the eye at the infinite imagination +which is the cause of phenomena. + + +[Illustration: DEATH'S DOOR: FROM BLAIR'S "GRAVE" + +Engraved by L. Schiavonetti after Blake's drawing. Published 1808] + + +As he states in a glorious passage in his prose essay of the Last +Judgement: "Mental things are alone real: what is called corporeal nobody +knows of; its dwelling-place is a fallacy, and its existence an imposture. +Where is the existence out of mind, or thought? where is it but in the +mind of a fool? Some people flatter themselves that there will be no +Last Judgement, and that bad art will be adopted, and mixed with good +art--that error or experiment will make a part of truth--and they boast +that it is its foundation. These people flatter themselves; I will not +flatter them. Error is created, truth is eternal. Error or creation will +be burnt up, and then, and not till then, truth or eternity will appear. +It is burned up the moment men cease to behold it." (This is a mystical +utterance, a spiritual discernment which will repay thoughtful +consideration. It gives the Last Judgement--hitherto conceived of by the +orthodox as a terribly material and mundane affair--an imaginative and +esoteric significance very grateful and welcome to the spiritually +sensitive.) "I assert for myself, that I do not behold the outward +creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. 'What!' it will +be questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire, +somewhat like a guinea?' Oh! no! no! I see an innumerable company of the +heavenly host, crying: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.' I +question not my corporeal eye, any more than I would question a window +concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it." + +One of Blake's most beautiful conceptions of God is as the universal +"Poetic Genius," and he was very fond of asserting that Art is Religion, +which indeed it is when, like his own, it represents the forms of this +world as the transparent media through which pulses the light of the +universal Poetic Genius. Another belief of Blake's must be quoted before I +leave this part of our subject: "Men are admitted into heaven, not because +they have curbed and governed their passions, or have no passions, but +because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven +are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all +the passions emanate, uncurbed in their eternal glory. + +"The fool shall not enter into heaven, let him be ever so holy; holiness +is not the price of entrance into heaven. Those who are cast out are all +those who, having no passions of their own, because no intellect, have +spent their lives in curbing and governing other people's by the various +arts of poverty, and cruelty of all kinds. The modern Church crucifies +Christ with the head downwards." And again, "Many persons, such as Paine +and Voltaire, with some of the ancient Greeks, say: "We will not converse +concerning good and evil, we will live in Paradise and Liberty! You may do +so in spirit, but not in the mortal body, as you pretend, till after the +Last Judgment. For in Paradise they have no corporeal and mortal body: +_that_ originated with the Fall and was called Death, and cannot be +removed but by a Last Judgment. While we are in the world of mortality, we +must suffer--the whole Creation groans to be delivered.... + +"Forgiveness of sin is only at the judgment-seat of Jesus the Saviour, +where the accuser is cast out, not because he sins, but because he +torments the just, and makes them do what he condemns as sin, and what he +knows is opposite to their own identity." + +And now I must gather together all the frayed ends of this diffuse but +necessary chapter, and put the vital points, around which the seeming +incongruities and strangenesses of Blake's assertions arrange themselves, +into a symmetrical if not an organic whole. The oneness of the Eternal +Imagination, "Universal Poetic Genius," or God the Spirit, was the golden +background to Blake's vision of life. And on this unity he saw contrasted +the endless diversity of the spirit's expression in phenomena. All error +(not sin, which he did not believe to exist) came from the fall of the +spirit (through Urizen the creator) into division and the sexual and +generative life of man. This tended to a closing up of man into separate +selfhoods, and each selfhood, in its effort to preserve its corporeal +existence and separate character, was guilty of error, and gradually the +inlets through which communication with the Universal Spirit was +maintained became closed up, and were senses only available, in most men, +for the uses of the natural world. This condition leads to spiritual +negation, but is merely temporary, for when the body is destroyed at +death, which is the Last Judgement, Urizen's power is broken, and the +soul, however attenuated (as long as not altogether atrophied), returns to +its pristine union with the Universal Spirit, and, though completely +merged in it, yet in some wonderful way it preserves its own identity, or +essential quality, while the body, which is error, is "burnt up." But even +in the prison of the bodily life Humanity may be delivered from the +cramping and negative effect of the selfhood, through Jesus Christ, who +exists as the Human Divine in every heart, and who at the voice of the +Universal Spirit rises from the grave of selfhood, and draws the Christian +up into the life of that spirit where is no error nor negation. + +It naturally follows that to Blake the one important point was to keep the +senses, "the chief inlet of soul," perpetually cleansed and open, that he +might descry the Great Reality of which Nature and all her phenomena are +but a symbol or shadow. + +In fact, Blake's hope for man lay in the contrary of Herbert Spencer's +philosophy. The continuous evolution into new divisions and organisms, +separate selfhoods and particles, was to him the falling of Urizen, head +downwards, and bound with the snake of materiality, deeper and deeper into +the abyss. By union, not division, by aspiring into the universal life, by +conquering the selfhood and cleaving to the divine element (Jesus Christ) +which exists in every human heart, Blake conceived that man might, if he +would, find salvation, true vision, and everlasting life. His own vision +was always double or symbolic, and he prayed to be delivered from "single +vision" and "Newton's sleep." For the preoccupation with Nature as an end +in itself and an object worthy of study was to him the great error, a sign +of the horror of great darkness that clouded the human intelligence. + +In moments of a special inrush of spiritual apprehension his vision was +"threefold," and sometimes "fourfold," which suggests that vista behind +vista unrolled itself, revealing untellable truth and beauty to his keen +etherealized sight. + +These things, not being matters of common experience, must be received and +understood intuitively, and not Blake himself can always make them +comprehensible to us. His language and visions recall the language and +visions of the Prophet Ezekiel, whose writings were read and re-read by +him till they created a frenzy of excitement in his sensitive brain. + +His opinion of women, far from being in accordance with our modern +emancipated views, was somewhat oriental, though among his poems we may +find many instances of sweet and spiritual femininity. + +When Urizen created Man and walled him up in his separate organism with +five senses, like five small chinks in a cavern to let in the outside +light, he gave him a dual nature, male and female, so that he was at first +a hermaphrodite. "The female portion of man trying to get the ascendency +of the male portion caused inward strife," so a further subdivision +occurred, and Man cast out his female portion, which became woman, and was +a mere "emanation" of man. "There is no such thing in eternity as a female +will," writes Blake oracularly, his happy experience being based doubtless +on the beautiful subjection of Catherine Blake to his own overmastering +personality. Yet he is bound to exclaim in "Jerusalem," "What may man be? +Who can tell? But what may woman be, to have power over man from cradle to +corruptible grave." We may fairly say that the inferior shadowy nature +which he imputes to woman was one of those opinions which he chose to +adopt, though his real and unconscious belief regarding her was possibly +very different. Be that as it may, he often makes her serve as a symbol +for material existence, obviously an infelicitous parallel. + +Having very briefly indicated the nature of Blake's religious and mystical +opinions, it remains for us to say a word about his mythology. + +In a letter written to Mr. Butts while Blake was at Felpham, these lines +occur among some verses, and will I think help us: + + For a double vision is always with me. + With my inward eye, 'tis an old man gray; + With my outward, a thistle across the way. + +The personification and nomenclature of these double visions of his seem +to suggest the genesis of this mythology. He has peopled a twilight mental +world with a dim shadowy population of personified states and conditions. +They bear strange mouth-filling names, such as Orc, Fuzon, Rintrah, +Palamabron, Enitharmon, Oothoon and Ololon. What each symbolizes must be +determined by the reader for himself. No explanation of their separate +functions will be attempted in this book. Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have +carried explanation and analytic criticism as far as it can be carried, +and the reader who is interested in the literary matter of the prophetic +books should consult their learned work as well as Mr. Swinburne's +highly-suggestive critical essay. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +HIS MYSTICAL NATURE + + +To the world of his own time Blake appeared a mad visionary, whose sweet +impulsive early poems attracted a few of the rarer souls of the age, but +whose pictures and designs were practically unknown. His genius, +atmosphere, and modes of thought were antipathetic to his age, and his +aims and achievement proved so difficult to understand from the point of +view of that day, that he was summarily and uncomprehendingly set down as +mad. + +This was an offhand and unintelligent method of accounting for so rare a +spirit. The spectacle of a man who might, had he chosen, have enjoyed +riches, honour, admiration and glory, but who instead, like his great +Master, cared not at all for lordship in this world, but much for the +preservation of the kingdom of the spirit that is not of this world, did a +great deal to earn for Blake the name of madman. The world has always +regarded the voluntarily poor with suspicion and misapprehension. + +Then, again, Blake was one of those who lived very near the veil which +shrouds the great unexplored spiritual forces. Death, as we know, seemed +to him but the "passing from one room to another." + +To raise the veil, to look forth on the cause of phenomena, on the visions +of eternal imagination, to strain to the uttermost that he might hear the +reverberations of the unmeasured mighty stream of Divine power, to bathe +within that stream, and let it bear him onward as it would--these were to +him the real purposes of life, and being so, formed other reasons why the +world, all engrossed as it is with wealth and position, and "here" and +"now," looked at him askance. + +To-day, however, there is an undercurrent of popular opinion--a small +stream, but strong--that recognizes him for what he is, and his name is +sacred as that of the great High Priest of Spiritual Art, to those who +compose it. + +It is noticeable that none of those who were personally acquainted with +him, save perhaps Crabb Robinson, ever gave credence to the prevailing +notion that he was mad: strongly do they condemn such a verdict. He was +eccentric, abnormally developed on the spiritual side, and undisciplined +in thought and speech. The mystic in him finally all but destroyed the +poet, though it never arrested the magnificent development of his artistic +genius. Again, much that is strange and difficult of apprehension in Blake +may be traced to the fact that his mind lacked the firm basis, the just +and right power of thinking, that comes from a sound education. As a +matter of fact, capriciously self-educated as he was, his ignorance of +ordinary rudimentary knowledge was as extraordinary as his acquaintance +with much that is caviar to the ordinary intellect. + +"Celui qui a l'imagination sans érudition a des ailes et n'a pas de +pieds." And so it was with Blake. But it does not detract one iota from +the illuminating quality of the thoughts which flash as it were from a +heaven in his brain in times of creative inspiration. Blake on the wing +has a strange beauty, a swift, direct and strenuous flight that thrills +and awes the imaginative spectator. It is only when this wild wonderful +creature is caught and entangled in theories and systems and human +reasoning, that we may not give him our intellectual adherence. + +Other causes which appear to give colour to the theory that he was mad are +the following: Blake had no curious regard or nice care for words, but +used them at random in speech, just as they came to hand, and as he +cherished numerous violent prejudices it naturally followed that he often +expressed them in very emphatic and often unreasonable language. +Passionate partisan as he was of the world of imagination as against the +world of fact, he assumed an attitude of defiance to natural science and +its oldest established facts which seemed to those who had not the key to +Blake's mind simply insane or at the best puerile. + +So accustomed was he to misunderstanding, that when strangers tried to +draw him out he seems purposely to have indulged in exaggeration and +symbolic language to baffle and mystify them. In ordinary intercourse, as +in his art and poetry, he seems to have had no care to put his mind and +his listeners or spectators _en rapport_ with his own. That magical +sympathy which some men know so well how to establish like a living +current between their own and other minds before "speaking the truth that +is in them," was not one of Blake's gifts. The sympathetic standpoint for +observance or understanding he expected from those who would be at the +pains to find out his meaning. "Let them that have ears, hear--if they +can, and if they be not too tightly shut into their selfhoods, and their +senses not clogged beyond cleansing with the dust and litter of +materialism," he would seem to say. + +Examining into the vexed question of Blake's visions, whether they were +the apparitions of an unsound mind, the automatic picture-making of a +vivid imagination, or the visual apprehension of supernatural appearances, +we shall see that madness is not the key to them, though we shall have to +admit a certain want of balance and proportion in his intellectual life. + +Sometimes one is tempted to think that he had eyes that saw the visible +loveliness and manifest images in which Plato supposes that Ideas exist in +the spiritual universe. Which being so, it is not wonderful that he was +called mad, for the Greek philosopher himself said that "this is the most +excellent of all forms of enthusiasm (or possession), and that the lover +who has a share of this madness is called a lover of the beautiful." Our +artist was a seer such as Plato meant, but his is a figurative rather than +an actual description of the mental operations which suspend such visions +before the prophet's eye. + +All the writers on Blake--Allan Cunningham, Alexander Gilchrist, James +Smetham, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, Sir +Richard Garnett--have discussed the subject, but I find the most +illuminating passage in an article by James Smetham included in the second +volume of Gilchrist's "Life," which I shall take leave to quote, for its +matter could never be better stated: "Thought with Blake leaned largely to +the side of imagery rather than to the side of organized philosophy, and +we shall have to be on our guard, while reading the record of his views +and opinions, against the dogmatism which was more frequently based on +exalted fancies than on the rock of abiding reason and truth. The +conceptive faculty working with a perception of facts singularly narrow +and imperfect, projected every idea boldly into the sphere of the actual. +What he _thought_, he _saw_, to all intents and purposes, and it was this +sudden and sharp crystallization of inward notions into outward and +visible signs which produced the impression on many beholders that reason +was unseated.... We cannot but on the whole lean to the opinion that +somewhere in the wonderful compound of flesh and spirit, somewhere in +those recesses where the one runs into the other, he was 'slightly +touched,' and by so doing we shall save ourselves the necessity of +attempting to defend certain phases of his work" (such as much of the +literary part of the prophetic books) "while maintaining an unqualified +admiration for the mass and manner of his thoughts." This seems a just +opinion. The colloquialism "slightly touched" (just that and nothing but +that) is the very phrase to express this elusive, almost indefinable +condition of mind. In all mankind living in conditions of time and space, +a certain adjustment of themselves to these conditions, and to each other, +is a necessary function of existence. The failure to comply with such an +adjustment was Blake's strength and weakness--the defect of his quality. + +As I have said before, he firmly believed in his own inspiration, and with +reason. For a mood of trance-like absorption would come upon him, his soul +would be rapt in an ecstasy, he was disturbed by no impressions of earthly +persons or surroundings, but was for the time being alone with his +quickening vision. At such moments his mind's eye was but the retina on +which God Himself projected the image. And he would permit no criticism, +no questioning of work which seemed to him not his own, but produced +through divine agency. + +All creative genius must work in much the same way. The vision is granted, +who shall say just how and whence, and its translation into any form of +art must be accomplished by a power as it were outside, above, the artist. +Vogl said of Schubert, that he composed in a state of clairvoyance. (That +is the reason why the Unfinished Symphony was, and always will be, +unfinished. Schubert transcribed the tormenting melody, the awful picture +of Fate suddenly reaching a long arm from out the smiling heaven to +arrest the blithe jigging mortal so gaily tripping along a flowery path. +The overwhelming terror and pity of it all shake the soul. But the vision +was withdrawn, the clairvoyant condition left Schubert, and so he wrote no +more.) + +Blake's conceptions were projected in form instantaneously and with +extraordinary vividness, and the vision seen with his mind's eye seldom +varied or faded till he had transferred its likeness to paper. In this he +was indeed unlike those artists who, having but a vague mental conception, +build up their designs from without, laboriously selecting and copying, +not that which will merely help to perfect the realization of the inward +conception, but those things which they conjecture will arrange themselves +most successfully in the making of an eye-pleasing picture. Such artists +are but little concerned with the innate and obligatory form with which an +idea must necessarily clothe itself. Blake writes in the Descriptive +Catalogue, "A spirit and a vision are not, as the modern philosophy +supposes, a cloudy vapour or a nothing: they are organized and minutely +articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce. +He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger +and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not +imagine at all." + +At the same time in justice we must admit that Blake sometimes failed to +make his vivid and living conceptions as clear to the world as he might +have done, for the reason that he neglected to refer to Nature for the +technique which after all is the language of Art. His art in this respect +is somewhat like that of the Italian Trecenti, who uttered burning +messages in a tongue which sometimes stammered. His impetuous soul never +wholly achieved the mastery of material which only a prolonged and patient +drudgery can give, but the images which hurtled from his imagination were +so forceful and superabundant that mere fiery creation, the unburdening of +the overloaded heart and brain, was the crying obligation which forced him +ever onward, seeking relief often in the mere act of projection. + +It is always a wonder that he makes so few mistakes, his technique being +manifestly deficient. When his drawing is right it is heroically, +magnificently so, and even when incorrect, it is always of amazing power +and almost convincing strength. + +"Execution," says Blake, in his notes on Reynolds' "Discourses," "is the +chariot of Genius," and when he mounts into the chariot and takes the +reins into his strong nervous hands, then, indeed, nothing can withstand +the flashing glory of his course. + +At such times the affinity between our artist and Michael Angelo is very +apparent. Both had the grand simple manner in their treatment of the human +form, both worked as it would seem "in a state of clairvoyance" and +according to the direction of a divine daemon, both felt the body to be at +best but the prison of the straining fluttering soul; but Blake's +conceptions glow with a whiter flame of spiritual intensity than do those +of the Florentine, greater as the latter was at all other points. I think +it is the presence of this mystic fire which forms one of the great +difficulties in the way of a facile understanding of his art-work. We feel +ourselves in the presence of an incommunicable overburdening spiritual +intensity. It has seldom happened that a mystic should be also an artist +translating those things which transcend human experience into the terms +of an art which by its very nature is only concerned with the sensible +creation. + +It is this incongruity between the thought and the language in which it is +conveyed--Blake's thoughts often lying beyond the proper range of a +graphic embodiment--which creates one of the great difficulties in the +way of our right apprehension of him. + +A few of his works, as we shall presently see, are perfect and flawless as +Art can make them, such as the "Songs of Innocence" and the majestic +series of designs to Job. In both of these, the thoughts, and their +incarnation in form, are harmoniously complementary each to the other. But +often the thought will not, cannot be inclosed: it outstrips the reach of +his art. Hence many designs are tumultuous with leaping ideas, dimly +apprehended suggestions, not one of which is caught and contained in its +essence, but seems rather, as it were, to flutter, tantalizingly enough, +just beyond the grasp. + +Blake "hitched his waggon to the stars," to use Emerson's expressive +phrase, and to the spiritually "elect" in art--those to whom ideas are the +really precious things--he speaks winged words and with authority. The +pity is that his art speaks thus clearly to the "initiated" only. The +sense of freedom of the spirit, of the absence of all contractile elements +in Blake's work must however be obvious to all. It is his special charm, +to be expansive, sublime, large. The great ethereal spaces of the sky have +breathed their inspiration upon him, and he has reflected the colour and +the mystery and the depth of the sea. To those who are spiritually +homesick he comes as an emissary from beyond the Great Darkness, from +where Life is found at its Source. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HIS ART WORK + + +And now we must turn our attention to Blake's art-work--the fruit of his +life "of beautiful purpose and warped power," as Ruskin calls it--and the +expression of those strange thoughts, beliefs and visions, which were his +real world. My purpose is, to turn over, as it were, the leaves of his +books in the Print Room of the British Museum (the only copies available +to the general public, though several finer are contained in private +collections), and thus help to recall to the crowded mind of to-day's art +the living burning spirit of Blake which is inclosed in those covers. +After which we will pass on to a general description and review of his +drawings, engravings and water-colours in the British Museum, and then +consider his pictures in the National Gallery. A chapter will also be +devoted to the Exhibition of Works of Blake which were on view for six +weeks (January and February, 1904) at Messrs. Carfax's Rooms in Ryder +Street, for this exhibition contained many of his finest works, and +several which will not again be seen by the public for many a long day. + + +[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789] + + +In Blake's time there was little hope of success for an artist who did not +put himself under distinguished patronage and paint at the direction of +some dilettante nobleman. According to the autobiography of B. R. Haydon +the artist (a strange character if ever there were one!), who was in his +heyday when Blake was a very old man, nobody could expect to get on +without a large dependence on patrons, who would often dictate subjects +and treatment, and advance large sums to the painter, to meet his +necessarily large expenses (for great canvases cost great sums); and on +the strength of this, bind his creative imagination to the yoke of their +own petty slavery. + +Blake, however, being conscious of his own high mission in art, and deeply +sensible of the divine obligation he was under to paint what he _must_, +had to forego the idea of working out his designs in large, for he was too +poor to pay for the necessary materials. Hence most of his work is +executed in very small space--in the leaves of the books we are about to +examine, and in water-colours and "frescoes" of very limited dimensions. +As we proceed it will be noted over and over again that designs some six +or seven inches square, and often less, are grand enough to be expanded +into large compositions and gallery pictures--indeed they would gain +considerably by so doing--for so much vitality and splendid strength seems +cramped in a confined area. + +But that _size_ in pictures is no test of conceptive artistic genius needs +no demonstration, though it may be conceded to be a gauge of executive +ability. And it is in conception that Blake is pre-eminent. + +Going quietly on in his chosen path, he has his little laugh at the crowd +of artists scrambling like chickens around the patrons, who mete out the +maize to this favourite Cochin or that admired bantam. + +We find this doggerel in his Note-book: + + O dear Mother Outline, of wisdom most sage, + What's the first part of painting? she said, Patronage. + And what is the second, to please and engage, + She frowned like a fury and said, "Patronage." + +Of patronage during his life Blake had but little, save from Mr. Butts, +who, however, had nothing of the conventional patron about him. He merely +bought with reverent appreciation whatever Blake pleased to paint, never +suggesting alterations or improvements, never blaming or criticising, but +merely receiving in faith and love. For which Blake, as we know, "never +ceased to honour him." But let no man think that poverty did not hamper +Blake, though he chose it rather than the slavery that would have been the +price he would have had to pay for even a moderate income. He himself +writes in the Descriptive Catalogue: "Some people and not a few artists +have asserted that the painter of this picture would not have done so well +if he had been properly encouraged. Let those who think so reflect on the +state of nations under poverty, and their incapability of art. Though art +is above either, the argument is better for affluence than poverty _and +though he would not have been a greater artist, yet he would have produced +greater works of art in proportion to his means_." + +Well, then: it was Blake's poverty and independence that caused him to +work mainly on a small scale, and it was the fact that he was poet as well +as artist--his poetry springing from the same creative impulse as his +plastic art--that led him to merge the two gifts into a perfect union in +the creation of his beautiful and unique books. The process by which they +were executed is thus described by Gilchrist: "The verse was written and +the designs and marginal embellishments outlined on the copper with an +impervious liquid, probably the ordinary stopping-out varnish of +engravers. Then all the white parts or lights, the remainder of the plate +that is, were eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the +outline of letter and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. From +these plates he printed off in any tint, yellow, brown, blue, required to +be the prevailing or ground colour in his fac-similes; red he used for the +letterpress. The page was then coloured up by hand in imitation of the +original drawing, with more or less variety of detail in the local hues." +To read this account when one has seen the product is like pondering the +receipt for a miracle. Gilchrist goes on to say, "He taught Mrs. Blake to +take off the impressions with care and delicacy." After, they were done up +in boards by her neat hands, "so that the poet and his wife did everything +in making the book--writing, designing, printing, engraving--everything +except manufacturing the paper: the very ink, or colour rather, they did +make. Never before, surely, was a man so literally the author of his own +book." + +For the convenience of classifying in some sort of rough way, this chapter +will deal with the "Songs of Innocence," the "Book of Thel," the "Gates of +Paradise," the "Songs of Experience," also touching lightly on a very +different book, Mary Wollstonecraft's "Tales for Children," illustrated by +Blake. + +The small octavo volume entitled the "Songs of Innocence"--with which the +"Songs of Experience," produced some years later, are also bound--will be +a revelation of beauty to all who have not seen it before, for there was +nothing like it before, and there has been nothing like it since. The +leaves of the Print Room copy, in all probability not a very early one, +have become slightly yellowed with age, but the colours remain rare and +delicate and iridescent as they were when they were first laid on, a happy +accident, for this has not been the fate of all Blake's coloured prints. + +"Every page has the smell of April," says Mr. Swinburne happily. Linger +where you will, a gay and tender harmony pervades every leaf, the smile of +an inspired child looks up at you and flashes something intuitive and +precious into your soul. The colours are the colours of morning. The +limpidness of the verses, the felicity of the designs, recall special +morning moods in the morning of life. Hope, innocence, joy, and an +all-pervading sense of Divine nearness, are the characteristic notes +sounded. Both the draught and the song weave themselves into a spell, each +one distinct, each having its own charm, its own perfume. + +The words without the embracing design, beautiful as they are, seem to +lose some of that delicate and aromatic fragrance diffused from them. And +the design without the words is an effect without a cause, and thus loses +its expressiveness. It is the union of the two that makes the celestial +singing, and, like antiphonal music, one part catches up, transforms and +augments the melody of the other, which, ringing silver clear, yet +half-hid and half-announced its entire significance. + +Our illustrations, in which perforce the colour is left out, are the +palest, most spectral of shadows beside the glory of the original plates. +They can but be reminders or suggestions, and must be accepted as such. + +Plate 2, represents a Shepherd, pipe in hand, following a cherubic vision, +his sheep in turn following him. The shepherd, be it remarked, has on a +vestment peculiar to Blake. It is indicated only by a line round the +ankles, wrists and neck, and a few rather realistic buttons, but it does +not hide the muscles and the modeling of the body at all. It is a kind of +glorified combination garment, but it is a matter of taste whether the +shepherd would not look as well unclothed entirely. The garment, too much +recalls the historic drawers which the outraged decency of the Vatican +obliged Pontormo to paint on the figures of Michael Angelo's "Last +Judgement" in the Sistine. + +Whatever reason Blake may have had for investing his shepherd in this +apparel, we are sure at least that it was not because he worried himself +about propriety! such a concern was far indeed from him. + + +[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789] + + +After all, this matter of the combination garment is the merest +quibble. The design has all the enchantment of the spring in its pale +delicious tints, and the browsing sheep with the glint of gold on their +fleeces bring something of Argonautic romance into this vision of April. + +The flamboyant title-page of the "Songs of Innocence," is a fine piece of +decorative design and colour. + +The keynote of the whole scheme is set in the perfectly simple song, and +the page in which it is embodied, called "The Introduction." The poem is +written in brown, on a ground bright with tremulous colours which wane and +wax in prismatic variation. Rose shoots, bent in and out, make a trellis +up each side of the verses, and the result of the whole! well! you may +call it a slight thing if you like, but it is as joyous as childhood, and +strangely delightful! No songs ever written for children were as these +songs; in especial, perhaps, "The Lamb," of which the simplicity and +tenderness are of so delicate a quality that the poem cannot be handled +critically at all. It can only be felt. + +The slightly richer and deeper tones of colour, and the premonitory note +of mysticism in the "Little Black Boy," afford a subtle charm: + + And we are put on earth a little space + That we may learn to bear the beams of love, + And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face + Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. + +Who could have written this but Blake? + +It is of lyrics such as this that Pater writes: "And the very perfection +of such poetry often appears to depend, in part, on a certain suppression +or vagueness of mere subject, so that the meaning reaches us through ways +not distinctly traceable by the understanding, as in some of the most +imaginative compositions of William Blake." + +"The Divine Image" is another equally lovely poem, with its sinuous +growth of ribbon-like leaves, climbing among the verses. The unmistakeable +figure of Christ at the root, raises a prostrate figure. + +The verses, writ in golden brown, lie on a ground of palest blue, +thrilling to Tyrian purple. + +"Holy Thursday," after the rainbow tints of many of the pages and the +luxuriance of their designs, is a Quaker-like and unpretending affair +altogether. It would seem to be the untouched impression as it was first +stereotyped off the plate; and is interesting for that reason. + +There is hardly anything in the book more delicious than Plate 25, "Infant +Joy." A typical (rather than botanically correct) flower with a +flame-shaped bud, and a wind-tossed bloom, springs across a page dyed like +a butterfly's wing. In the cloven blossom a mother and her small baby sit +enthroned while an angel with wings like a "White Admiral" stands +entranced before the happy child. + + "I have no name; + I am but two days old." + What shall I call thee? + "I happy am, + Joy is my name." + Sweet joy befall thee. + + Pretty joy! + Sweet joy but two days old. + Sweet joy I call thee: + Thou dost smile, + I sing the while; + Sweet joy befall thee. + +These are the spontaneous, gushing notes of the bird in springtime, +careless, unstudied but felicitously right, not to be corrected or even +touched, for each word must lie where it fell, just so and no other way. + + +[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789] + + +Plate 20, "Night," with its graceful lady tree growing up beside the +verses, is a beautiful shadowy design on a background in which blue and +green merge and deepen in a veil of evening mist and the poem is another +of those minute pieces of perfection, which, like delicate sea-shells, +were cast up out of the stormy ocean of Blake's mind. + +In their own way, and with due regard to their special range and quality, +the "Songs of Innocence" are the most perfect things Blake ever did, for +he attempted no effect in song or design that his art was not adequate to +express, and his imagination lies over all like the haze of spring +sunshine. At that time the lyric poet in Blake was dominant, compelling +him to sing, while the mystic was hardly yet consciously awake in him. + +But in the next book, "The Book of Thel," the mystic has stirred and +breathes through the poem. The story is veiled in a shining mystery, but +is still quite intelligible and pellucid in style, till just at the end, +when the sphinx riddle of this life, the paradox of the senses, the wonder +and terror of death, close round the consciousness of Thel, and dark +sayings are uttered darkly. Thel is the youngest of the daughters of the +Seraphim, but is herself a mortal. All her joy in her own beauty and that +of the natural world is destroyed by the thought that she must die, the +flowers must fade, the cloud will melt away, everything must change and +decay. The Lily of the Valley answers her gentle lamentation, telling her +that in this very change, the feeding of the lives of others with our own +life, lies the secret of an endless and blessed immortality. She herself +will hereafter "flourish in eternal vales." Thel assents to this-- + + Thy breath doth nourish the innocent lamb: he smells thy milky garments, + He crops thy flowers, while thou sittest smiling in his face, + Wiping his mild and meekin mouth from all contagious taints. + +That is all very well, she seems to say, _you_ help to revive and nourish +many creatures, but what do I do? I shall fade away like a little shining +cloud. The lily then calls down a cloud, which appears in the bright +likeness of a radiant youth in mid-air. The cloud tells her that when he +passes away in an hour's time, "It is to manifold life, to love, and peace +and raptures holy." He will wed the Dew, and linked together in a golden +band they will "bear food to all our tender flowers." + +But Thel complains that she does nothing for any living thing, + + Without a use this shining woman lived, + Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms. + +Then the "cloud reclined upon his airy throne" tells her that even that +would prove her of great use and blessing, for + + Everything that lives + Lives not alone nor for itself, + +and in token of the truth of what he says he calls the helpless worm, +which appears to Thel as "an infant wrapped in the Lily's leaf." + +This lowest form of created life is cradled in a mother's love to Thel's +surprise. The Clod of Clay appears to comfort its weeping babe and tells +the wondering "beauty of the Vales of Har," that being herself the meanest +of all things, yet nevertheless she is the bride of Him "who loves the +lowly," and is the mother of all his children. + +Whereat Thel weeps to find life and love everywhere, even where she +expected nothing but coldness and horror. Then "matron Clay," invites Thel +to enter her house, saying that it is given her to enter and to return. So +Thel entered into the secret regions of the grave, and passed on "till to +her grave-plot she came and there she sat down, and heard a voice of +sorrow" speak from out it. It is a wild blood-stilling cry that rises to +her terrified ears, shrieking of the senses, their limits, their precious +and their poisoning gifts--these only avenues through which life may be +enjoyed, and by which eternity must be coloured. + +Nothing answers! there _is_ no answer? It is the old Faust riddle that has +occupied the minds of thinkers since the beginning of time. It fretted +Blake into a state of painful excitement. "The Virgin started from her +seat, and with a shriek fled back unhindered till she came into the Vales +of Har." + +The designs, of which there are but five, have still the serene and +delicate air which belongs to Blake's youthful work. The colour is pure +and thin, the outlines printed in faint Italian pink, and the effect of +all is of things seen through a haze, which the sunshine is beginning to +penetrate. + +A delightful impression of rain-washed, wind-swept morning is given by the +frontispiece, in which Thel--a motive of perfect poetic +grace--contemplates the wooing of the fairy Dew, whose home is in the +calyx of the flowers, by the Cloud. Above their heads is a patch of blue +sky, across which the title is written, while birds and angels wing their +happy flight in the ethereal expanse. Exquisite also is the pale vision of +the lily of the valley bowing before Thel. And the cloud, and the clod of +the earth bending over Baby Worm, are alive with Blake's peculiar quality +of imagination. The tail-piece represents a serpent of pale green hue +coiling and rearing across the page. One naked infant drives him with +reins, while two more ride joyously upon his back. + +About the same time Blake wrote a poem called "Tiriel," which will be +found in the Aldine edition of his poetical works. It was never engraved +in a book by him, and has little poetic beauty, being for the most part +full of clamorous rage, dire slaughterings and cruel revenge, but he made +some water-colour drawings illustrating the text. + +The Print Room does not possess a copy of the "Marriage of Heaven and +Hell," which appeared in 1790, but the Reading Room has one which can be +viewed in the large room set apart for rare books. + +None of Blake's prose writings, in sustained thought and power, are equal +to it. It is an armoury containing flashing rapiers, whose thrusts reach +home as suddenly as they are withdrawn again. The glitter of steel in +sunlight is suggested by many of its aphorisms. I cannot forbear quoting +one or two, in reading which one would seem to hear the very voice of +Blake: + +"He whose face gives no light shall never become a star." + +"The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy +sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the +eye of man." + +"Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity." + +"He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." + +"How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way, + +Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five." + +"Damn braces; bless relaxes." + +"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." + +"All deities reside in the human breast." + +"Joys impregnate, sorrows bring forth." + +"Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth." + +"To create a little flower is the labour of ages." + +"Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without +improvement are roads of genius." + + +[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM COPY OF +THE "MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL," PRODUCED 1790] + + +The aphorisms are followed by five "Memorable Fancies," wild dreams full +of paradoxes, and allegories both spiritual and grotesque. The designs to +this book are very fine, but I cannot help thinking that this particular +copy was not coloured by Blake's hand. In comparison with the one formerly +belonging to Lord Crewe, which in all respects is magnificent, the Library +copy is coloured too crudely, to be in the least characteristic of Blake. +Particularly unlike him are the heavy gray shadows disfiguring the nude +figures. There is no impasto work here as in the Crewe copy, but the +colour is put on with no uncertain or unpractised hand, though in a manner +unlike Blake. Far more delightful are the renderings of several of these +plates as seen in the small "Book of Designs." They are worked up with the +utmost care and finish, and the distinctive qualities of Blake's colour, +the unmistakable impress of his hand, are there exhibited in their highest +manifestations. The sense of mystery, innate to their conception, is +preserved, nay, accentuated! whereas the Library copy, through its +unpleasant, and I cannot but think un-Blakean passages of colour, has lost +in some places this romantic and inimitable quality. The title-page alive +with leaping flames, a nude woman bathing, salamander-like, in fire, the +heaving body of a patterned water-snake writhing in foamy water, and a +male figure seated on a mound prophetic of the design presently to be +consummated in "Death's Door," are among the most notable of the pictures +in the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." Many of the pages are faintly +tinted, while delicate suggestive ornaments cling about the writing. + +In 1791 Blake designed and engraved for Johnson six plates to "Tales for +Children," by Mary Wollstonecraft. The book is in the Print Room, somewhat +yellow and musty. In no sense is it attractive, and it would find small +favour with the modern child. The fact is that Blake worked in dire +constraint when illustrating homely scenes of actual life. He had no +pleasure in the invention of accessories. In his art all is left out that +may be, and the bare, the sparse, the elemental, and the austerely +beautiful alone receive his attention, but always adjusted to meet the +requirements of his own rigid sense of harmony in composition. + +Then again single vision, "the vision of Bacon and Newton," concerned only +with actual appearances, did not seem to him worth the transcribing. He +could only work with freedom when the fact could be treated as merely the +symbol of an idea. So that in these plates the homely domestic scenes he +tries to represent have a cold and ghastly appearance. They are like +nothing we have ever seen, because Blake was so curiously unobservant of +details not interesting to him that he simply did not _know_ about them +when he came to draw them. His work is only of a high order when his +imagination is excited. His spiritual insight not being called into play +renders many of these engravings weak, dull and archaic-looking. + +There are among them suggestions of the terrible, and of significances +beyond this world however. They form grim and foreign accompaniments +enough to the milk-and-water stories, and are about as suitable as the +Orcagna frescoes in the Pisan Campo Santo would be to adorn the walls of a +child's nursery. We willingly shut up the book and turn to one produced +two years later called the "Gates of Paradise." The title-page says it was +designed, engraved and published by Blake, but adds Johnson's name too. +But we know that the book is all Blake, and it is probable that Johnson +gave his name to the venture through a kindly, perhaps pitying, desire to +help Blake with the public. + +"The Gates of Paradise" it is called, though no glory of colour, no +beautiful angels, no city of gold, such as the title might lead us to +expect, are displayed in its pages. Indeed, to some the first glance may +bring disappointment. + +These elemental and direct designs, sixteen in number, are very rough, +even rudimentary, as engravings. But they are true art-work, for they +concentrate and express conceptions and ideas of a rare order, and with a +piercing directness that drives them home to our most intimate, most +central consciousness. + +Either you will feel their power and charm, and come under the subtle +spell at once, or else you will glance through them unmoved, and perhaps +contemptuously, and wonder what people can profess to see in this rude and +Gothic draughtsmanship. If this latter is the case, then Blake has nothing +to say to such an one, for it is no use to expect a literal and exact +interpretation tacked on to all his designs. Blake must and will be +discerned intuitively by his true lovers, and few words will suffice to +indicate the track of his thoughts to such; to others, all the explanation +in the world would never reveal him, for, to use his own phrase, "the +doors of their perception" are not sufficiently cleansed to admit his +conceptions. + +The frontispiece gives us a reminiscence of Thel. A chrysalis, like a +swaddled baby, lies on a leaf, while on the spray above a caterpillar--the +emblem of motherhood--watches over it. Underneath is inscribed, +significantly enough, the words, "What is man?" Blake's thoughts were +never long away from this subject. To find an answer to the question was +his deepest preoccupation and concern, and the following designs are all +variations on this one dominant theme. Plate No. 1 represents a woman +gathering babies like flowers from among the clustering ivy at the foot of +a tree. In glad haste she plucks up one more to put with the others +already lying, like St. Elizabeth's roses, in the folds of her apron. The +child is found symbolically at the root of what Mr. Swinburne thinks is +the tree of physical life, embedded in the earth from which all things +issue, and to which all things return. The next four plates are +embodiments of the four elements, which in Blake's thoughts always teemed +with "spiritual correspondences"--according to the Swedenborgian phrase. +"Water" seems to be an emblem of folly and instability, and is embodied in +the form of a man seated on the very roots of the tree of physical life, +his feet set upon no firm earth, but upon the sand at the verge of the +water. The foolish, helpless face, and hands spread out on knees, and the +driving rain that descends with pitiless energy on all, go far to convey +the idea of the perpetual flux and flow, the "unshapeableness" of the +element "Water." A gnome-like man in a crevice represents "Earth." He is +inclosed, bound down, weighted with clay. Sitting on a high white cloud +amid the starry spaces of the sky, "Air" sits in form like a naked man, +pressing his hands to his forehead in fear and giddiness at the vast +immensity unrolled before his eyes. + +"Blind in fire with shield and spear," a man strides in Plate 5. Is this +fire an emblem of the fierce elemental fires of Desire and Hatred--both of +which are blind? + +Plate 6 is entitled "At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell," and +a delicious cherub having broken the egg proceeds to climb out of it into +the sunlit air. Symbol of the material life which forms a concrete +circumference around the soul of eternal man, the eggshell is broken, when +"at length for hatching ripe," the veil of death is rent by the liberated +spirit. + + +[Illustration: "I WANT! I WANT!" + +Engraving from the "Gates of Paradise," 1793] + + +In Plate 7 and its successors Blake takes us back again to incidents +characteristic of the life of man on earth.--"Alas!" exhibits a boy +wantonly catching and killing bright little loves, which flutter across +his path like butterflies. Plate 8 is a youth throwing barbed darts at +an old man who sits on ruins sword in hand. + + "My son, my son, thou treatest me + But as I have instructed thee," + +writes Blake, suggesting the numerous cases of friction and cruel offence +which must result from the education of the human soul in selfishness and +vainglory. + +There is nothing in the series to equal the colossal daring of "I want, I +want." Just a little cross-hatching, a little rough spluttering work with +the burin, and we have this bit of marvellous irony. A group of tiny +pigmies on a spit of land have reared an enormous ladder against the moon, +and are about to start on their journey through star-bespread darkness to +the pale crescent so far above them. Mr. Swinburne says that this was +originally an ironical sketch satirizing the methods of Art study pursued +by "amateurs and connoisseurs"--"scaling with ladders of logic the heaven +of invention," and presuming to measure, reach and gauge the intangible +ideal. But in this series Blake has expanded the meaning of the design +into the passionate yearning and aching desire of man after things +spiritual. + +Plate 10 is a study of the sea. A water-colour in washes of Indian ink of +very similar composition is in existence, and was on exhibition at Ryder +Street in 1904. The water-colour evidently suggested by this plate is the +finer work, but it is a marvellous evidence of Blake's power, that the +tiny plate of the "Gates of Paradise" (1-5/8 in. by 2 in. only in size) +should be capable of representing so infinite a waste of stormy waters. +One frantic arm reaches up to Heaven from out the foamy crest of the +waves, a minute later to be submerged,--"In Time's ocean falling, +drowned." That is its significance! No cries of "Help!" will be heard; Man +_must_ be overwhelmed by Time. + +In the eleventh plate an old man in spectacles ruthlessly clips the wings +of a bright boy who wrestles and struggles under the cruel hands. Thus +does Age, full of worldly experience and material philosophy, clip the +wings of the aspiring soul of Youth. + +Walled in by the divisions and materialisms into which Man has fallen +through the creation of the generative nature, we see human souls +despairing, and full of lassitude, enclosed in depths of icy dungeons, in +the twelfth plate. This plate was afterwards taken as the basis of the +design Blake made of Count Ugolino and his sons in the tower at Pisa in +his Dante series. + +In Plate 13 comes the promise of life. A man stretched on his bed with his +family watching beside him, suddenly has a vision of "The Immortal Man +that cannot die." After that all is different, and in Plate 14 "the +traveller hasteth in the evening" of life to his journey's end, serenely +cheerful, even anxious to shake off mortality, that he may realize his +glorious vision the sooner. + +But the way to Immortality is through the Gate of the Grave. So in Plate +15 we have the picture of Death's Door, to which our traveller has arrived +at last. This early design embodying Blake's favourite conception was +destined to be enlarged and sublimed into one of the most magnificent +inventions of Christian Art. This is the first hint of the perfect final +work, and on that account, as well as for its own intrinsic significance +here, of the greatest interest. + +Death's Door being opened, the Worm is seen at work in Plate 16. Who shall +say how Blake has contrived to make the pale, hooded woman under the +tree-roots so symbolic an image of the Worm? There is that about her at +which the recoiling flesh shudders and sickens. + + +[Illustration: THE DELUGE + +From W. B. Scott's Etching of Blake's undated Indian Ink Drawing, by kind +permission of Messrs. Chatto and Windus] + + +Yet here, below the dim, twisted roots of the Tree of Physical Being, +whence the embryo Man was plucked like a mandrake, is the house of the +worm. "I have said to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister," quotes +Blake enigmatically, beneath this leprous dream of mortality. But the +enigma has a solution, for the worm at least destroys that body of +generative and divided nature to which it is itself so nearly akin, and +which has cramped and imprisoned eternal Man while on earth. So that we +may be grateful to the worm in the end, for + + Weaving to dreams the sexual strife, + And weeping over the web of life. + +I have quoted an illuminating phrase here and there from the lines which +Blake wrote and called the Keys of the Gates of Paradise. These, however, +are but fugitive hints and thoughts suggested by the plates, and not in +any real sense "keys" at all. Blake leaves each man to unlock the +innermost mystery of those designs for himself. They are steeped all +through in his own peculiar hues of thought, subjective to the very verge +of the subjectivity allowable to art, but each of them exhibits that +pictorial sense without which, however poetical and rare the meaning +expressed, they could have no _raison d'être_--no artistic right to exist. +They induce the mood which assists us to their sympathetic comprehension. + +After the "Gates of Paradise," Blake began the production of the London +"Prophetic Books," but we will consider these in the next chapter, and +will conclude this early phase of Blake's work in book making by the +consideration of the "Songs of Experience," which appeared in 1794--five +years later than the "Songs of Innocence." + +Again we take up the little book which was the first we handled in the +Print Room, for the "Songs of Experience" are bound with the "Songs of +Innocence." The Museum copy bears the double title on the first page as +well as the two separate ones, which occur appropriately before each book. +Into this first plate, with its kindling title flashing across the +page--"Songs of Innocence and Experience showing two contrary states of +the human soul"--Blake has wrought some of that intense and passionate +feeling which makes the work so valuable as much psychologically as +artistically. + +Two energetic and expressive figures, a male and a female, symbolize +Innocence and Experience, while flames of Desire and Aspiration burn +fiercely around them, leaping up to lick the letters of the title, which +lie on a ground of flickering and fainting colour. + +In the "Songs of Innocence," the marriage of the poems and designs was +complete, and matter and form (poetic and artistic) attained an almost +complete identity. + +Here, however, the case is somewhat different, the task to be accomplished +not being so easily achievable, for the mood is less lyrical and more +mystic. + +Experience is a hard teacher concerned only with this material life and +its limited conditions, and sets itself against the Innocence which +retains, in Plato's phrase, "recollections of things seen" by eternal man +before generation here. Experience has nothing to do with vision, but only +with facts, and it deals with the results of concrete experiment; never +with the flashing spark of heaven-sent inspiration. + +Thus the "Songs of Experience" are of far less simple mood and single +utterance than their bright forerunners. Something of the remorselessness +of experience has passed into these lyrics--for lyrics they still are, +though Blake has lost the spontaneity and felicitous gush of melody which +came from him so naturally, so rightly, six years previously. + + +[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF EXPERIENCE," +1794] + + +Of one--not spontaneous certainly, but created little bit by little bit +with unerring judgement and rich fancy, struck out like the embossed +design on a shield, each blow, each delicately graduated tap and touch, +bringing out in clearer relief the magnificence of the heraldic images--of +this poem, "The Tyger," it is impossible to speak too enthusiastically. It +is a grand piece of chased metal work, and Blake has done nothing better. +The fierce swift rhythm, imitative of the padding footfalls, + + Tyger, tyger, burning bright + In the forests of the night, + +called out Lamb's critical admiration, and no one was ever better +qualified than Lamb to appreciate our painter and poet. It is matter for +regret that he came across so little of Blake's work in either kind, +though we shall find him presently with something to say anent the +engraving of the "Canterbury Pilgrimage." + +One wishes (profanely no doubt) that our artist had seen fit to make the +tiger that illustrates the British Museum copy, yellow and black, rather +than blue and bistre and red, which colours seem to have no natural +relation to the animal. Is it possible that this page was coloured by Mrs. +Blake's hand in these weird parti-hues? + +The "Songs of Experience" are pitted like a dark contrast against the +sun-kissed radiance of the "Songs of Innocence." + +One state of mind opposes itself aggressively against the contrary state +of mind. One set of impressions is recorded in opposition to the +impressions of sometimes the same things, sometimes their correlatives +taken from a widely divergent stand-point. Thus the Lamb in the "Songs of +Innocence" finds its contrast in the Tiger of the "Songs of Experience." +Infant Joy is set against Infant Sorrow, the ordered beauty and sweetness +of one Holy Thursday is the reverse of the despairing cry of pain uttered +in the other Holy Thursday. The Divine Image emits its celestial radiance +against the cynical brilliance of the Human Abstract, and that other +distorted Divine Image. + +It is interesting to know that Blake issued the "Songs of Innocence and +Experience" at the modest price of from thirty shillings to two guineas at +first. Later in life he received four guineas for each copy, and during +his last years Sir Thomas Lawrence insisted on paying twelve guineas and +Sir Francis Chantrey twenty for copies. + +At Messrs. Sotheby's sale of the Crewe Collection of Blake's works on +March 31st of last year (1903) the price reached for a very perfect copy +containing the four title-pages, was £300. The sum would have been wealth +to Blake, but it is the world's way, consecrated now by immemorial +tradition, to lay its laurels of reward and appreciation only at the +_dead_ feet of its great men. + + +[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE PROPHETIC BOOKS + + +"The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they +dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them, and whether they did +not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, and so be the +cause of imposition? + +"Isaiah answer'd. I saw no God nor heard any, in a finite organical +perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in everything, and as I +was then persuaded and remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest +indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote." +These words are quoted from one of Blake's "Memorable Fancies" in the +"Marriage of Heaven and Hell," and in some such vein as that which Blake +makes Isaiah describe, did he himself commence the writing of the +"Prophetic Books." The sense of his great, though somewhat indefinite +mission, came upon Blake gradually. Much of his time, even when engaged in +designing, engraving and painting, was spent in thinking immense and +original thoughts. They tyrannized over him, these thoughts, and instead +of his guiding their sun-ward and most daring flight, they drew him along +on their reckless course, sometimes bringing him to complete overthrow, as +did the horses of Apollo when driven by Phaethon. + +In the same "Memorable Fancy" from which I have already quoted, Blake +continues, "Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? He +(Isaiah) replied, All poets believe that it does, and in ages of +imagination this firm persuasion moved mountains: but many are not capable +of a firm persuasion of anything." + +Blake, however, _was_. He had a fine contempt for argument and proof. +Nothing mattered to him but the inner witness, the lively intuition of +internal evidence. Convinced as he was of the cruelty of the fate that had +chained eternal man into the bondage of the life of the senses and the +division of the sexes; safe-guarding each self-hood from merging in the +universal, by laws of restraint and prohibition, Blake took upon himself +to proclaim a gospel of deliverance, to awaken man to the perception of +the Infinite which lay without the clogged-up chinks of his senses. + +He passionately advocated--Blake, the peaceful citizen, the faithful +husband--the freedom of the senses, that all natural impulses should be +enjoyed to the utmost limit and with the frankest delight. The body is but +the accident of this life, and its free natural impulses may be trusted, +for everything that tends to freedom belongs to eternal life, he thought. + +Christ was the supreme Saviour, but to his eyes the Christ of orthodox +religion was the God of this world, and therefore Christ needed to be held +up again before men and exhibited as He really is, before He could be +worshipped in truth. + +And Jehovah was no other than Urizen, the cruel creator. In storm and +excitement, in wrapt ecstasy and complete carelessness of consequence, +Blake plunged into the sea of subjective mysticism, holding up from time +to time out of the swaying waters lipped with raging foam, some treasure +of thought, some broken image of speculative opinion for the world to gaze +at. The pity is, that Blake who, in the "Songs of Innocence and +Experience" and in his early poems, had so just, though instinctive and +irrational, a sense of the relation of poetic form to matter, as to weave +his lyrics into "a unity of effect, like that of a single strain of +music," should, in the "Prophetic Books" have suddenly lost, as it would +seem, all perception of the claims of his subject-matter to any body of +poetic form at all. The absence of almost all orderly sequence of thought, +and this total disregard of the paramount artistic obligations of form, +are the distinguishing characteristics of the mystic writings. + +It must, however, be recorded in extenuation, that they were composed for +the intrinsic benefit which Blake himself derived from their creation. +Hints, symbols, rags of ideas set fluttering on the wind of his +ever-inventive imagination, suggested so complete a sequence of thought +and action to him, that he failed, in his passionate excitement and hot +pursuit of them, to reflect that he had forgotten to state for our +enlightenment that sequence which seemed to him so obvious. He was not +concerned to make his ideas or visions intelligible to the world (the +world must learn to decipher them for itself), for were they not fearfully +intelligible to himself, absorbing all his life and consciousness? + +Like a man intent and fixed before a vast and ever-moving pageant, he +throws out a quick word of explanation, an occasional exclamation of +enthusiasm, to the blindfolded world at his side. So present is the +reality to his senses, that he feels only impatient with the dull creature +which requires so much explanation and description. "I have told you, and +you did not listen," he seems to say. But listen as we may, to the point +of an anguished intensity, the marvellous Vision, Representation, mystic +Something, which is being enacted before Blake, can, with the help of his +jerky and disjointed speech, be but vaguely and painfully guessed at by +us. Whatever virtue may reside in these dream-like books for the mystic +and the occultist, their poetry is not a winged and triumphant spirit any +more, but a poor, wan, and halting creature, creeping painfully upon the +earth on all fours. Swinburne writes on the subject with poetic eloquence: +"To pluck out the heart of Blake's mystery is a task which every man must +be left to attempt for himself, for this prophet is certainly not 'easier +to be played on than a pipe.'... The land lying before us bright with +fiery blossom and fruit, musical with blowing branches and falling waters, +is not to be seen or travelled in, save by help of such light as lies upon +dissolving dreams, and dividing clouds. By moonrise, to the sound of wind +at sunset, one may tread upon the limit of this land, and gather as with +muffled apprehension, some soft remote sense of the singing of its birds, +and flowering of its fields." + +Let these gentle and appropriate words smooth the literary path of the +"Prophetic Books" for all who intend to read them. It will be a difficult +one for those who would study them seriously, even with the light shed by +Mr. Swinburne's and Messrs. Ellis and Yeats' pioneer lanterns, for the +road is rough and rock-bound, and shrouded, for the most part, in mist. + +If we are forced to admit that in the prophecies Blake's power in the art +of poetry was declining, we shall have, on the other hand, the +satisfaction of seeing his art as draughtsman and colourist waxing in +grandeur, freedom and nobility. More than ever in Blake's strangely +sensitive pictorial temperament we find--to quote Pater's subtle +phrase--that "all things whatever, all poetry, all ideas, however abstract +or obscure, float up as visible scene or image." To many of his lovers, +the "Prophetic Books" are among his most precious gifts to us, not for +their intrinsic poetic value (which will be estimated in divers manners by +divers persons), but as being the vehicle of his finest art. The first one +we take up is the "Vision of the Daughters of Albion." (The daughters of +Albion, by the way, have little enough to do with the poem, their office +being merely like that of a Greek chorus, to hear the woes of the heroine +Oothoon and echo back her cries.) I am here referring to the one in the +Print Room, though the Library possesses an almost equally beautiful copy. +The book consists of eleven quarto pages, and appeared in 1793, just five +years later than "Thel," to whose mysterious and delicate beauty it has a +shadowy relationship. The thread of poetic suggestion running through it +like a streak of sunlight is not so easy of following as the broad golden +ray of "Thel." We are met at the very entrance by dim, unreal forms, with +strange names--Oothoon, the shadowy female around whom the story centres, +Theotormon, her jealous lover, and Bromion, a looming phantasmal +personage, not definite enough to be terrible, though he is the evil +genius of the piece. So now we are at last introduced to some of the +personages of Blake's curious mythology. The argument--a page of the most +delicate and energetic design, representing a radiant young woman +"plucking Leutha's flower," which, in the form of a man, leaps from the +blossom to her lips--contains in its two initial verses the clue to all +the ensuing legend. Oothoon is, according to Mr. Swinburne, the spirit of +the great western world, "born for freedom and rebellion, but half a slave +and half a harlot." Leutha is the spirit of sensual impulse and +indulgence. + +Theotormon, to whom Oothoon wings her way across the seas, is the strong, +enslaved, convention-bound spirit of Europe. On her way, Oothoon is +ravished by Bromion, who appears to be merely brute strength personified, +and the jealous and revengeful Theotormon binds them back to back in a +cave by the sea, and sits down in utter wretchedness near by. All the rest +of the piece is occupied by the mournful wailing of Oothoon, who desires +to justify herself, and the sad answers of Theotormon, which make a +disquieting music like the wind among pine-trees. + +Those who desire to know exactly what every vague phrase and unconnected +thought may be ingeniously supposed to symbolize, must be referred to +Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, who have possibly alighted on the real meaning +and intention of these wild fancies. No system, not even that of the Zoas, +ingenious as it is, seems quite to convince one that it is the ground plan +of Blake's work. For my own part I shall not attempt systematic +explanations of the "Prophetic Books," for which task, indeed, I am +entirely unfitted, but shall merely reserve to myself the right of making +suggestions as to possible meanings when they occur to me. + +The beauty of the designs is the real glory of this and the following +books. + +The Argument and a very notable bit of decorative design and colour, +representing the Eagle of Theotormon in the act of descending and tearing +the beautiful, abandoned, white body of Oothoon, lying on a billowy cloud, +should be specially noticed. + +There is one extraordinarily fine plate worked in flat, even tints, +representing Oothoon and Bromion bound back to back on the sea-shore, +while Theotormon, with head buried in arms, sits on a rock above in the +very abandon of stony grief. We have seen nothing of Blake's yet, so bold, +decisive, nervous. The massive modelling of the Bromion torso is happily +contrasted with the shrinking white slenderness of Oothoon. Beyond this +passion-torn group, a calm sea, under a mild afternoon sun, shines deeply +blue. We shall come across this plate again in the large book of designs +in the Print Room. There, it is heavy and opaque in colouring, and totally +different in mood, being gloomy and sinister in the highest degree. The +blood-red sun hangs like a lamp in stormy purple clouds. The sea is deeply +green. All is ominous. Much more like this latter plate, in colour, +than the one issued in the complete work in the Print Room, is another, +printed off the same plate, of course, but laid on with an impasto. It was +sold at Messrs. Hodgson's on January 14th, 1904, for £29. Neither it nor +that in the "Book of Designs" is so beautiful as the one from which our +illustration is taken. The plate in the Library copy is another variation, +being soft, mysterious and pale in colour. The clarity and brilliance of +the colour, however, must be seen to be appreciated, and this of course, +our plate lacks. The writing and printed outlines of this book are in dead +beech brown. + + +[Illustration: BROMION AND OOTHOON BOUND BACK TO BACK IN THE CAVE OF +THEOTORMON + +From "Visions of the Daughters of Albion," 1793. A printed and coloured +plate from the Print Room copy] + + +The next book appearing in this year, 1793, is entitled "America," a +prophecy. It consists of eighteen plates. For richness of invention and +design none of the books we have yet seen are equal to "America." The +Print Room copy is printed in a dull blue, with a very happy effect, while +the duplicate in the Library is in deep sombre green. Gilchrist says that +no one who has not seen a coloured copy can judge of the beauty and +splendour that adorn its pages. It is a difficult matter to see a coloured +copy, as the only one definitely known to exist for many years was Lord +Crewe's copy, which was sold last year at Sotheby's for £295. However, +another coloured copy has appeared from the hitherto unknown collection of +a lady in Scotland, and this I had the rare good luck to see before it was +sold at Messrs. Hodgson's in January, 1904, for £207. Indeed it is +beautiful, but with a quite other sort of beauty to that of the austere +blue-printed copy in the Museum. The two are so different in mood and key +as to seem like quite separate and distinct creations. Gilchrist says of +the coloured copy which he saw--Lord Crewe's--that so fair and open were +its pages, as to simulate an increase of light on the retina. + +That which I examined had the brightness and delicacy of Blake's colour in +the earlier books, combined with the richness and grandeur of the later +ones, but happily without the opacity and heaviness that sometimes +accompany these later qualities. + +Dürer's etching of "Melancholia" is the only thing in art to which the +design on the first page of "America" may be likened, but, in Beethoven's +words: "Es ist mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei." A great winged +giant or Titan, with his despondent head bowed on his knees, and his face +utterly shrouded by falling hair, sits chained on the ramparts of the City +of Night. Seated on a stone below is a beautiful undraped woman with a +little naked child in her arms, and another leaning against her thigh. +Heavy clouds roll up behind the genii and the ramparts. The mood of the +picture is unutterable. The winged figure is red Orc, who will presently +release himself and shatter the religions of Urizen, bringing fire and +pestilence and famine in his train. He is Orc, the deliverer, but, like +his great prototype, he comes not "to bring peace, but a sword." + +In the wild clamorous poem Orc is described as the "serpent form'd who +stands at the gate of Enitharmon to devour her children." Now Enitharmon +is a vast mythic being without any defined personality; she symbolizes +sometimes Space and sometimes Nature, while another facet of her various +character, as we shall presently discover, is Pity. She is the mother of +Orc, of whom, however, she is terrified, and the woman with the children +in the frontispiece represents, I think, the same Enitharmon. + + +[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE TO "AMERICA: A PROPHECY," 1793 + +Printed in blue, from the Print Room copy] + + +I cannot attempt to decipher the poem here. Before its roaring frenzy of +excitement one is rendered dumb. There is no story properly so called. One +merely gathers, that Orc releases himself in order to marry the shadowy +daughter of Urthona,--Ah! shadowy indeed! After this, terrible things +occur; in especial, that which may be supposed to symbolize the War of +Independence between England and America. Whatever the prophecy contained +in the poem, this much is clear, that Blake saw in the new world the home +and harbinger of Freedom, the foe of spirit-crushing conventions, of +shackling traditions and customs. Strangely do the names of Washington, +Paine, and the King of England read in connection with "red Orc," +"Enitharmon," and the mighty shadows of the Blakean mythology. With all +his enthusiasm and patient sympathetic study even Mr. Swinburne has to +admit of "America" that "it has more of thunder and less of lightning than +former prophecies--more of sonorous cloud, and less of explicit fire." + +But a far other verdict must be passed on the designs, of which our +illustrations afford a very good idea, at least of the British Museum +copy. From the first mysterious print to the last, every page is instinct +with vigour and invention, and the disposition of the writing and the +design on each page is in accordance with the most exacting and sensitive +feeling for composition and decorative effect. Blake had the gift of +decoration as Mozart had that of melody. He simply could not help being +decorative, though preoccupation with decoration as an end in itself was a +thing utterly foreign to his earnest and high artistic aims. In "America" +Blake's outlines are put in with a thick strong line, a singularly happy +method of expressing the bold designs. Plate 6, is specially interesting +as being evidently his first feeling out after the top part of the design +called Death's Door, which afterwards appeared in its perfected embodiment +in Blair's "Grave." The lower part of the same design which we saw first +in the "Gates of Paradise," is again repeated with differences in Plate 12 +of the "America." The idea was a favourite one with Blake, and in its +various representations is always vigorously and poetically treated. + +Plate 7, coming after so much that is alarming, exciting, or of sustained +grandeur, comforts the eye and heart with its delicate pastoral +tenderness. + +A tree, with willowy bending sprays such as only Blake could draw, arches +over a green sward, whereon a ram with woolly fleece and heraldically +curly horns, lies sleeping. Beside him, on the grass, a naked child lies, +relaxed in slumber, while another, cushioned on the ram's soft back, +sleeps too, in joyous ease. In the coloured copy this page appeared +particularly rich and satisfying. It has a brilliant iridescent background +after the style of the first few pages of the "Songs of Innocence," but +less vernal, more autumnal, in its richness of colour. + +In what strange dreams did Blake see the pale woman of Plate 13 lying on +the bed of ocean. Quick moving fishes flash around her body in the dim +blue twilight, and a sea snake is coiled about her legs. On the top of the +same page the body floating on waves is being torn by a vulture. + +Many of the plates are quivering with flames which shoot up in spiral +tongues to play about the letters of the writing. Incidentally, the +writing used in "America" is more fluent--running into dainty pennons and +fluttering streamers of decoration--than any used before. + +At the sale of Messrs. Hodgson's before mentioned, a single loose coloured +plate of the frontispiece to "America" (Orc chained by the wrists) sold +for £20 10_s._ + +We close "America" regretfully, for a wild enchantment emanates from its +pages, and entering into the spectator's mind makes him realize that +indeed "everything possible to be believed is an image of truth." + + +[Illustration: PAGE FROM "AMERICA: A PROPHECY," 1793 + +Printed in blue, from the Print Room copy] + + +In 1794 appeared "Europe, a prophecy." It has fifteen large plates, but +before dwelling on them a word must be said about the prophecy itself. +The prelude is the lament of a nameless shadowy female, who rises from out +the breast of Orc. She is also daughter to Enitharmon. Her complaint is +often musical enough if we could but know what it was all about: + + I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab'ring head, + And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs, + Yet the red sun and moon, + And all the overflowing stars, rain down prolific pains. + +Blake would seem to have got fairly drunk with the excitement of wild +words and musical phrases. There is little or no sequence of ideas, and +the prophecy which follows the prelude comes storming forth, full of +sonorous sound, but "without form and void." + +All that can be made out from the din of frenetic words is that Enitharmon +calls upon her son Orc, "the horrent demon," to arise and bring with him +his brothers and sisters. But in the middle of her speech she falls into a +primaeval doze of some eighteen hundred years. Patient and painstaking as +the reader may be, an incident of this kind taxes his temper somewhat too +severely, more especially as it seems a gratuitously irritating freak on +Blake's part, without any apparent sense or reason to justify it. +Persevering, we find that while she is asleep all kinds of dire affliction +come upon the race of man, and the wild pelter of words and ideas hither +and thither continues to increase in fury. It is like the dancing of the +Dervishes--faster and faster, furious and more furious, higher and higher, +so quick at last that the eye cannot follow the movements,--and then comes +the breaking out of the wild demoniac cries, and the convulsive +excitement, which is finally satisfied with nothing but the letting of +blood. + +After all this incoherent clash of words, full of "flames of Orc, howlings +and hissings, shrieks and groans, and voices of despair," Enitharmon +calmly awakes, "nor knew that she had slept, and eighteen hundred years +had fled," and proceeds with the roll call of her sons and daughters as if +nothing had happened. + +Rintrah, Palamabron, Elynittria Albion's Angel, Ethinthus, +Manatha-Varcyon, Leutha, Antamon, Sotha, Thiralatha and Urizen are the +names of some of the spectral shadows which pass before the spectator. + +It is a dream of Walpurgis Nacht, obscure and vague; its warrings being no +more than the dissolving shadows of fighting men partially discerned on a +dark wall. + +But if Blake can no longer take us with him into the infinite on the wings +of his poetry, he can with his pencil create on a sheet of paper a world +of imagination, which in relation to this actual world is evanescent and +to some impalpable. But Blake's magic has caught and held it, as Peleus +caught and held the silver-footed Thetis, though she changed from one form +to another hoping to frighten him into letting her go, till tired of his +persistence she revealed herself to him in her own wondrous form. Even so, +Blake caught and held that which his imagination discriminated, undismayed +by conditions which cause some men's heads to reel, until he succeeded in +committing it to outline and colour. + +The first plate represents "The Ancient of Days setting a compass upon the +face of the earth." (See Proverbs, viii. 27.) The Museum copy has a +passage from "Paradise Lost" written, or rather scrawled, in black ink +underneath the picture. One wonders whose could have been the irreverent +pen to deface in this way a page of the Master's work. The design itself +is one of the finest that ever came from Blake's hand. The thing is +tremendous! Involuntarily the mind seeks for its like only on the roof of +the Sistine. Blake's art owns no master, links itself to no predecessor, +save Michael Angelo. + + +[Illustration: THE ANCIENT OF DAYS SETTING A COMPASS UPON THE FACE OF THE +EARTH. (_See_ PROVERBS, VIII. 27) + +Frontispiece to "Europe: a Prophecy," printed 1794 + +Print coloured by hand] + + +This was the last design to be repeated by his hand. On his deathbed he +executed it for his young friend Mr. Tatham. The latter refers to the +incident in a letter published in 1803, in the "Rossetti Papers": + +"The Ancient of Days with the compasses was the subject that Blake +finished for me on his deathbed. He threw it down and said, 'There, I hope +Mr. Tatham will like it,' and then said, 'Kate, I will draw your portrait; +you have been a good wife to me.' And he made a frenzied sketch of her, +which, when done, he sang himself joyously and most happily--literally +with songs--into the arms of the grim enemy, and yielded up his sweet +spirit." + +The conception is of sublimity and boldness, and in the execution of this +particular plate the colour is laid on with great care, being shaded and +stippled to a high degree of finish. The attitude of the Architect of the +Universe is heroic, and is characteristic of Blake in his best manner. +Leaning far out from the centre of the sun itself, a grand male figure, +with hair and beard streaming in the wind of cosmic motion, measures the +space below him with a compass, indicating the orbit on which the world is +to travel. + +The Museum possesses another edition, as a separate drawing, in one of the +portfolios, which we shall examine later. Mr. Sydney Morse possesses yet +another, which was on view at Messrs. Carfax's Gallery; and a fourth, +probably the finest of all these different renderings, was sold with the +title-page and three plates of "Europe," at Messrs. Hodgson's sale for +£80. + +The frontispiece to "Europe" has a magnificent evil-looking snake on the +centre of the page, blue hills and distance seen through its mottled +coils. + +"The Pilgrim," some verses by Ann Radcliffe, are scrawled on the blank +reverse of the leaf. The first and last time it may be supposed that Ann +Radcliffe found herself in such august company! All of the plates in this +book are defaced by the same handwriting. + +Blake's writing and the engraved outlines are of a bluish green colour. + +"Red Orc" is seen in the second plate climbing up the sky and about to +take his station on a bank of cloud outlined boldly against the blue. +Below him, in a limbo of darkness, three naked passions in the form of +demons are struggling together and falling down into the nether heavens. + +On the page entitled "a Prophecy" a lovely angel takes her despairing +flight through the sky. Her wings merge from white and mauve to a deep +blue like that of a pigeon's neck, her beautiful feet gleam white against +the rosy cloud behind, and her hair falls over her face in abandon of +grief or fear or despair--we know not which. All the different and +delicate shades in an hydrangea are to be found in this plate, and would +seem to have suggested its subtle colour harmonies. + +For pure melody of line the next plate surpasses it, however. Enitharmon, +fierce, beautiful, nude, descends in a cloud to awaken Orc, who lies face +downward on the earth, the outline of his figure suggesting a young +love-god rather than the fierce personality of the terrible Orc. Even the +flames about his head might be those of love. The colour is very delicate +and transparent. + +Then follow two full-page interiors, which, in spite of the fine drawing +and colour, oppress, with the uncomfortable sensation of confinement, +airlessness! The fact is, that we are so accustomed to Blake's open air +windy wilds, and broad spaces of sky and cloud, that we do not feel at +home with him when he takes us within doors. + + +[Illustration: PLATE FROM "EUROPE, A PROPHECY," 1794 + +Printed and coloured by hand] + + +Another plate from the "Europe," the lines of which we reproduce, +represents two lithe nude women springing upwards with incomparable grace +and the true Blake vigour, among arching wheat stems. They blow horns +through which descends a fall of blight upon the corn. The decorative +rightness, the exquisite appreciation of the melodies of form, the +vitality of action, cannot be too much admired. And the colour! The tender +flesh-painting contrasted with the young green of the corn!--Yet Mr. +Swinburne, usually so intensely alive to the beautiful, and especially +Blake's beautiful, describes the plate in these terms: "Mildews are seen +incarnate as foul, flushed women with strenuous limbs contorted, blighting +ears of corn with the violent breath of their inflated mouths." + +There is some delicate tracery of cobwebs, among leaves and greenery, on +another page, exhibiting Blake in a marvellously naturalistic mood for +once, and a final plate of a man rescuing a woman and child from fierce, +rolling flames. No one ever painted fire as Blake did, and over and over +again in his treatment of this favourite motive we shall have to own that +he is, as Mr. William Michael Rossetti says, in this respect at least, +"supreme painter." + +As I do not know where to place the tiny book or pamphlet entitled, "There +is no Natural Religion,"--it having no date affixed to it,--I shall refer +to it here. It consists of eleven illustrated leaves, each containing in +the engraved text a didactic statement or thesis by Blake on this +favourite subject. Below the words, which give much illumination to his +peculiar opinions, are small, rough drawings made with a brush full of +heavy black, relieved in parts by outlines in sepia. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE PROPHETIC BOOKS CONTINUED + + +In studying the next book which Blake produced in 1794--the "Book of +Urizen"--it is necessary to disabuse our minds of the idea that Blake's +thoughts were not clear to himself. However confused and troubled they +appear to us, they were certainly clear as sunlight to him, but he failed +in the labour of reducing them to terms of intellectual definiteness, much +less to terms of poetic art. The excitement which these visions brought +upon his tremulous and sensitive brain seems to have induced a kind of +"possession," similar to that of the maenads at the festival of Dionysus +of old, so that no very consecutive utterance may be expected from him. +Yet there _is_ a kind of sequence in "Urizen," and the marvellous +illustrations to the book cannot be properly appreciated without holding +the thread of the so-called poem. Setting aside the ancient Biblical +tradition, our prophet undertakes no less a task than the writing of a new +Genesis, which in its naked horror and despair causes the very gods +themselves to hide their faces out of pity to the sons of men. + +Urizen the creator, the god of restraints and prohibitions, becomes +self-inclosed and divides himself from Eternity and the Eternals. + + +[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF "URIZEN." PUBLISHED 1794] + + +In fire and strife and anguish he creates the world, "like a black globe, +viewed by the Sons of Eternity, standing on the shore of the Infinite +Ocean, like a human heart struggling and beating, the vast world of +Urizen appears." But after this effort he is laid in "stony sleep +unorganized rent from eternity." Los, who is Time, was then wrenched out +of Urizen, and suffers fierce pain in the act of separation and division. +Then, while Time works with hammers at his forge, fires belching around, +he sees, nay! appears to assist at, the further changes of Urizen. For the +"formless god" is gradually taking form, and inclosing himself in a human +body. He assumes bones, heart, brain, eyes, ears, nostrils, stomach, +throat, tongue, arms, legs, and feet. And now "his eternal life like a +dream was obliterated." An age of intense agony and stress was allotted to +the evolution and development of each created portion of the body. + +Meanwhile Los "forged chains new and new, numbering with links, hours, +days and years." + +When Los had finished his unwilling task, and saw Urizen all bound with +the chains of time, the senses, and the enclosing boundaries of his own +selfhood, "Pity began." This is another painful division and shrinkage,-- + + In tears and cries imbodied + A female form trembling and pale, + Waves before his deathy face. + +Her name is Pity or Enitharmon. She is also Space, and her union with Los +or Time naturally follows. The Eternals are so terrified at what Urizen +has done, that they enclose the new creation in a tent to hide it from +their sight, and call the tent Science. From the union of Space and Time +springs a child, Orc, hereafter the deliverer, whom the father and mother +chain with the chain of jealousy below the deathful shadow of Urizen. + +Urizen then explores his new kingdom, and, looking on his teeming world, +he sickened, for he saw "that no flesh nor spirit could keep his iron laws +(of prohibition and restraint) one moment." So he made a great Web or +Net, and flung it over all, and this was called the Net of Religion. And +of his now finished Creation it is written, + + Six days they shrunk up from existence + And on the seventh day they rested. + And they blessed the seventh day in sick hope, + And forgot their eternal life. + +The evolution or changes of Urizen form the subjects of a great number of +the plates. Blake has wrought here through the pictorial medium as Dante +wrought the "Inferno" in his own art. The same high imagination, the same +passionate and unshrinking realization of it, the same terrible force are +integral parts of the minds of both artists, and inspire both works, +different in kind as they are and separated by centuries of thought and +feeling. No wonder that Linnell desired Blake in his old age to make +drawings from the "Inferno," "thinking him the very man and only to +illustrate Dante." + +The prelude to the book is set in a tender and lovely key, very difficult, +however, to harmonize with what follows. It is not obvious why it occurs +here or what connection it has with the dark story of Urizen. The same +little picture will be found in the smaller Book of Designs, but there it +is quite differently rendered as to colour, and I think more beautifully. +Our reproduction is from the latter plate. + +The cloud-like form of a beautiful woman, drifts across the sky, drawing +by the hand a little baby, with the ideal face of sweet infancy. There is +a delicious curve in the woman's body, a swirl of the garments, and a +quick, fish-like, darting movement about the action of the child which +contribute to the impression of flight through a buoyant atmosphere. + +Turning over the pages of "Urizen" one terror after another takes the +breath and quickens the pulse. Urizen--or is it Orc?--his terrible face +averted, strides through a world of fire dividing the flames with his +arms. + + +[Illustration: LOS HOWLING + +Colour-printed plate from "Urizen." 1794] + + +A human figure, snake-encircled, falls headlong into raging flames, +recalling a somewhat similar idea in "America." Los is next seen, howling +in fire, because of his painful separation from Urizen. + +Poor solitary thinker! what shuddering emotions must have rent Blake as +his relentless hand drew and coloured the visionary appearances of these +monsters of imagination! + +To the hot and lurid impression of Plate 6 succeeds one, in which a pallid +skeleton, bowed head between knees, sits grisly on the ground. Urizen +assumes bones. In much the same attitude, but now turned to the spectator, +the next plate shows us an arresting figure. An old man, nude, with white +hair, and patriarchal beard sweeping the ground, shows an upturned +despairing blind face. Suggestions of indescribable suffering are +incarnate in this design. I shall take the liberty of calling the type the +"Blake old man." We come across it again and again, and it instances his +tendency to concentrate all varieties into a type, to make his artistic +language as bare and simple and elemental as possible. + +The story can be traced through all the plates. Urizen visiting his new +world forms a series of six wonderful plates, of which one is very Gothic, +representing as it does an amphibious-looking old man very like a gargoyle +sinking slowly through a world of water. It is a true grotesque. + +The most poetic of all the pictures is, I think, the one which represents +the Birth of Enitharmon or Pity. Rising from a cloudy abyss with that +bubble-like buoyancy which Blake knew so well how to breathe into his +figures, a nude woman with body bowed in anguish floats upward. The face, +with its strange dim, tortured eyes, speaks of the suffering which only +the complex and self-conscious soul born of the mingled forces that +produced the French Revolution and the New Age is capable of experiencing. +The body is of wonderful beauty and purity. On the brink of the abyss from +which she rises like the smoke of a hidden fire, Los kneels with head +bowed in arms. His deep musings have brought forth this strange +sorrow-laden beauty. + +Another picture, Humanity chained by the wrists and ankles in slavery, its +blind eyes raining tears, but with the light of Eternity like an aureole +behind its head, is seen waiting, waiting, with an endless and most +painful patience, for some final deliverance. Like Michael Angelo's "Il +Penseroso," "it fascinates and is intolerable." No more piteous or +significant symbol of humanity has ever been conceived, in the full +compass of its sorrow, its slavery, and its hope. Blake utters a +Promethean cry in "Urizen." He calls out on the creator for having +imprisoned and tormented us. A wild ineffectual cry enough, and one not +consistent with brighter and saner views, which he held as passionately, +but then,--it is Blake! And Blake was never able "to build a house large +enough for his ideas." The Print Room does not contain a copy of the "Book +of Ahania" which is a continuation of the theme of "Urizen," but short and +unillustrated. + +The small Book of Designs should be looked at in conjunction with "Thel," +"Urizen," the "Daughters of Albion" and the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," +for the plates are repetitions from these books often far more rich in +colour and delicate in execution than those in the complete works. + +The large Book of Designs contains, among many plates familiar in design +to us, though varied always in colouring, four, which we have not seen +before, and can see nowhere else. The first is a colour-print of morning +or Glad Day. It is a radiant design, but like many of these +colour-prints of Blake, somewhat the worse for time, having the paint +rubbed off and blackened in parts. Blake's colour-printing process was as +follows, according to the only extant account: + + +[Illustration: COLOUR-PRINTED DESIGN FROM "URIZEN." 1794 + +Reproduced from the "Small Book of Designs"] + + +He drew the outline heavily in chalk on a mill-board and put on the colour +diluted with oil or glue in thick patches, and printed the wet impression +off on to paper. He then worked upon this rough ground, when dry, in water +colour. But only in a few instances did he show complete mastery of the +ingenious method. + +The second plate I would call attention to is a nightmare horror entitled +the "Accusers of Theft, Adultery and Murder." There are a trio of furies, +only male instead of female; the watermark of the paper is 1794. A similar +design, not so finely coloured, was sold at Messrs. Hodgson's for £15 +10_s._ The third is a lovely little gem representing John the Baptist +preaching to a beautifully grouped crowd. Its fellow sold at the same sale +for £26 10_s._ The fourth represents a semi-nude figure, with head +downcast, sitting beneath the bent and blasted stump of a tree, while to +the left a woman nude and of remarkable beauty tosses a child high in arm. +It is thought that this plate may have been intended for a cancel in +"America"; for another one, more beautiful in colouring than this, which +was also sold at Messrs. Hodgson's, and for £42, was found to bear some +text from "America," faintly discernible under the colouring on the upper +half of the plate, which could be read only from the back. + +In 1795 Blake produced the "Song of Los." The Print Room copy is heavy and +opaque in colour, though very splendid and rich, and the Library copy is +similar in most respects. It was evidently colour-printed after the method +described above, for the peculiar mottled backgrounds are an effect that +could not very well have been realized by any other method, nor even then +are they understandable, unless indeed Blake had a wooden stamp which he +impressed on the blobs of colour first laid on the paper itself. + +The "Song of Los" is the Song of Time, and includes the "Songs of Africa, +and Asia." So now Blake has written a song of prophecy for each of the +four great parts of the earth. "Africa" deals in a wild incoherent way +with the rise of the various religions. Urizen delivers his laws of brass +and iron and gold to all the Nations. These were "the nets and gins and +traps to clutch the joys of Eternity," and Har and Heva--representatives +of natural humanity--find "all the vast of Nature shrunk before their +shrunken eyes," for the senses are the limits put upon perception. + + Thus the terrible race of Los and Enitharmon gave + Laws and Religions to the Sons of Har, binding them more + And more to Earth: closing and restraining: + Till a philosophy of the Five Senses was complete. + Urizen wept and gave it into the hands of Newton and Locke! + +In "Asia" Urizen hears the despairing cry of his creation, and himself +shudders and weeps, but unavailingly. Orc is heard raging on Mount Atlas, +where he is chained down with the chain of jealousy. Orc is the Flame of +Genius, the true deliverer of the Race. He was chained by his father and +mother in fear of Urizen's jealousy, but we know that he will break free +at last, and bring his living fire into the hearts of the chosen of the +peoples. + +The book contains but five pages, of which the most beautiful is a design +of a boy and girl with arms wound around each other, running over a +hill-top, with a passionate sunset sky behind them. The "Book of Los," +which must not be confounded with the Song, appeared in the same year. The +Print Room has no copy, so we must descend to the Library, which happily +possesses one. It consists of four chapters on the old themes, written +in a sort of metrical prose. The frontispiece, representing a woman in the +characteristic attitude so often adopted by Blake--the figure being seated +on the ground, with head supported on knees in a mysterious lone place +among rocks--is an arresting and powerful design. The writing in this book +is particularly fine and clear. It is the last of Blake's "London Books of +Prophecy." + + +[Illustration: THE ACCUSERS: OR, SATAN'S TRINITY + +Colour-print from the Large Book of Designs in the Print Room] + + +What shall I say of "Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion"--this +longest and perhaps most mystical of all Blake's dithyrambic books? + +It was written, as well as the "Milton," during the Felpham period, though +probably added to, and finally finished after his return to London. + +Those who have heard the extraordinary tone-poem called "Also sprach +Zarathustra," by Richard Strauss, may not think it far-fetched to suggest +a parallel between revolutionary, chaotic, yet somehow great music, such +as it is, and the so-called poem of "Jerusalem." To the authors of both, +the classical, the established forms of expression belonging to their +respective arts, seem outworn, inadequate, cramped. They feared to trust +the new wine of their fermenting ideas to the old bottles of recognized +form, and each has invented for himself a way of escape--somewhat +dangerous, nay, almost suicidal--from the pressure of precedent, law, and +order. Strange harmonies, horrid discords, sweetness as of honey, to be +succeeded by a sharp acridity like that of unripe lemons, great marshalled +orchestral forms, and wild abortive sounds, tormenting alike to ear and +heart, are to be discerned in "Zarathustra," not without irrational +excitement, anger, dismay, and occasional delight on the part of the +hearer. And in "Jerusalem" is it not much the same? + +With an Olympian audacity Blake writes, "When this Verse was first +dictated to me, I considered a monotonous cadence like that used by +Milton and Shakespeare, and all writers of English blank verse, derived +from the modern bondage of rhyming, to be a necessary and indispensable +part of verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true orator, such +monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself. I +therefore have produced a variety in every line, both of cadences and +number of syllables. Every word and every letter is studied and put into +its place; the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, the +mild and gentle for the mild and gentle parts, and the prosaic for the +inferior parts; all are necessary to each other; Poetry fettered, fetters +the human race." + +Self-assertion such as this is the apology for arts like those of Strauss +and Walt Whitman, and our very admiration for Blake's youthful lyrical +gift compels us to lament that his muse was brought at last, after those +early days of soaring flight, to wading through such quagmires of +so-called poetry as this and the ensuing book. Mysticism had engulfed the +poet in its dim cloud, though poetic phrases and passages like crystal dew +glitter amid the gloom. + +The "Jerusalem" may be regarded as an attempted poetic statement of +Blake's mystic philosophy regarding the development of humanity and its +various states. + + I give you the end of a golden string + Only wind it into a ball, + It will lead you in at Heaven's gate + Built in Jerusalem's wall, + +writes Blake in the course of the book. Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have wound +it into a very tangible ball, taking the symbolizism of the four Zoas as +the clue to the whole mystery. Blake mentions the Zoas here frequently: +"Four universes round the mundane egg remain chaotic" (nothing could be +more true!) "One to the North Urthona; one to the South Urizen; one to the +East Luvah; one to the west Tharmas. They are the four Zoas that stood +around the throne divine." But if the symbolism of the Zoas is in reality +woven into the very tissue of the story, and forms its vital and coherent +argument, it must be discovered on some mathematical principle very +foreign, and, indeed, repugnant to the lover of true poetry. It is in no +sense obvious or sequential. The value of the book lies, not in its +poetical merit, nor even primarily in its mystic significance, but in the +insight which it affords into the byways of Blake's mind. The knowledge of +his opinions gained here (they have been shortly commented on in a former +chapter) enable us to form correct estimates of the scope of his plastic +art, and his outlook on the world. Messrs. Maclaggan and Russell have +edited a plain-typed and unillustrated edition of "Jerusalem," and promise +an expository essay on it to follow in due course, so that to earnest +readers its study will be greatly facilitated. The book is concerned with +one Albion, the father as it would seem of all created men, and Los (Time) +who is his friend. Jerusalem and Vala are his emanations--Jerusalem being +his wife. The city of Golgonooza--that is, I believe, Spiritual Art--is +also described, and bears its part in the story. + +On page 13, line 30, we read, "Around Golgonooza lies the land of death +eternal; a land of pain and misery and despair and ever-brooding +misery"--the repetition of the word "misery," does not sound as if every +word had been studied and put in its place! But the idea that the +beautiful city of spiritual Art should be built in the midst of pain and +despair reminds one of a similar idea of Goethe's, "Art enshrines the +great sadness of the world, but is itself not sad." And the following +lines develop the suggestion, page 16, line 61: "All things acted on +Earth are seen in the Bright Sculptures of Los's Halls, and every age +renews its powers from these works. With every pathetic story possible to +happen from Hate or Wayward Love and every sorrow and distress is carved +here." + +The introduction of localities, streets and districts, has an almost +ludicrous effect, as for instance in the following lines: "What are those +golden builders doing near mournful ever-weeping Paddington?" Is it, one +wonders, a prophetic announcement of the erection of the Great Western +Terminus? Had Blake possessed the saving grace of humour, he would never +have committed such laughter-provoking solecisms as this and other +passages of the same kind. Humour is a means of restoring and keeping the +balances true. It assists the sense of proportion, and like a fresh wind +blows the cobwebs away; but, alas! Blake had no faintest trace of it. + +In a kind of Dionysiac rage he has flung his noble ideas, original +conceptions, pell-mell into the cauldron along with mere windy, +mouth-filling rodomontade. There is a great deal of confused noise, but by +snatches we distinguish the half-drowned but heavenly music. The fact is +that his material (God-dictated, as he thought) so excited him that he was +unable to deal with it, unable to direct the heat of his genius into +fusing the heterogeneous mass into the perfect artistic unity. The vision +unnerved him, and he all but lost his balance. Well might he too have +cried: + + A veil 'twixt us and Thee, dread Lord, + A veil 'twixt us and Thee, + Lest we should hear too clear, too clear + And unto madness see. + +The illustrations to the book have all the concentration, power and grasp +which the literary matter lacks. The pages seem to throb beneath the +teeming forms of life with which his hand has adorned them. Each in the +disposition of the beautiful writing is a picture. Wild passionate little +figures, drawn with exquisite feeling, leap, climb, and fly about some of +the borders while on others the writing is interrupted and entwined with +creeping tendrils, or adorned with flames, stars, serpents, and +processions of insects--a riot of decoration. + +"Jerusalem" is a folio of 100 pages, one side of each leaf only being +printed. From the first page to the twenty-fifth of the Museum copy the +writing is in black, while the designs are left white outlined in black, +on a dense sable ground. Pages 26 to 50 are in deep green, the printed +designs being sometimes finished by hand, the deepest tones being laid on +with a brush full of heavy colour. Pages 51 to 100 are again black and +white--the black being always of great intensity. + +In the first plate a man is seen entering through a door into darkness, +with a lamp in his hand. This is our old friend Los entering into the dark +places of Albion's mind--Albion having turned his back on "the Divine +Vision." Curiously poetical suggestions are to be found in the title-page, +whereon a cherubim with covering wings weeps over a beautiful prostrate +female. This lovely body forms the central vein of a rose leaf, and is +incorporated in its vegetable life. But above the woman's head are the +wings that have become atrophied, and the moon and stars, like the eyes of +a peacock's feathers, are seen on them, suggesting reminiscences and +possibilities of spiritual development in "Vegetative humanity" beyond +verbal expression. Glanced at as a whole without discriminating the parts, +this fanciful and Gothic conception bears a strange resemblance to a +butterfly. Did not the Greeks find in the butterfly a symbol of the +immortality of the soul and its renewal in youth, and Blake, who was so +profoundly sensitive to analogies of this kind, was not likely to have +created this obvious resemblance accidentally. Everything is with him +significant. + +Is it a dryad who lies outstretched on page 23 with the rising sap of her +vegetable life stirring within her fibrous extremities, and awakening her +to some dim half-painful consciousness. And below her, what hints of +strange buried gnomic life, of Titans convulsively heaving like volcanoes +in the dark earth, of creatures begotten of rocks and tree-roots, living +like the suckers of plants in the fissures and crannies of deep strata! + +Again, on page 33 appears the beautiful weird fantasy that I have named a +dryad. The sun and the moon shine on her simultaneously, and her +rudimentary limbs appear now to be branches and again to be embryonic +wings. A sort of vampire bat is poised above her. At the top of the same +page a man with the world under his foot like a stool would seem to have +been saved fainting in the arms of an effulgent divine Being from some +threatening danger. + +I pondered long over this design before finding the clue, which I now +believe is to be found in these words, on the previous page, in +"Jerusalem": "The reasoning spectre stands between man and his immortal +imagination." + +On Plate 53 is represented a woman sitting enthroned on a sunflower, her +double wings form a sort of baldachino above her head. She has a triple +tiara from which flames arise in a pyramidal shape, and the sun, the moon, +and the stars are contained in her vast wings. The vegetative human has +blossomed in the sunflower of spiritual life. No longer "the starry +heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion," but instead of +separation there is a large union. "In every bosom a universe expands," +and "everything exists in the human imagination," are words which help to +explain this curious design. + + +[Illustration: PRINTED PLATE (UNCOLOURED), FROM "JERUSALEM, THE EMANATION +OF THE GIANT ALBION." 1804] + + +A coloured print of the same plate, very sumptuous and rich, was exhibited +in the Carfax Galleries in January, 1894. + +A beautiful drawing on page 46 gives the meeting of Vala with Jerusalem +and her children, but as an artist's forms often contain more in them than +the obvious expression of a fact, so here one may permit oneself to see +another meaning underlying this, as the ancient text underlies the +palimpsest. Vala may also have an analogy with Death, who like a veiled +woman meets a mother with her children. As she lifts her veil, and looks +upon one among the group, the child takes flight and attempts to draw his +sister after him. Blake, who seldom made his faces characteristic, but was +satisfied with making them merely typical, has given this woman's face a +piteous expression of fear and entreaty. + +A notable plate is that representing the Crucifixion, the motive of which, +when disengaged from the confused material of the book, is discovered to +be the bed-rock or foundation, the radical thought, at the base of +"Jerusalem" and the next work "Milton." Jesus the Saviour is Eternal +Imagination slain by men, who nail it to the "stems of generation," that +is, kill it through the opacity of the senses and the limitations of +sexual life. Just in the same way Orc, the deliverer, who is a type or +other aspect of Jesus, is Genius, and by man is nailed on to the rocks of +Mount Atlas. + +Looking through the pages of "Jerusalem," vague memories of Norse sagas, +of dim carved stalls in old Gothic cathedrals, of the cold cellar-like air +that sighs through their aisles and chapels, come to one and cause a +delightful and yet fearful shudder. But the designs savour only in a +fleeting irrational way of these things, having a wholly unique character +of their own. + +The "Prophetic Books" reproduced by Messrs. Ellis and Yeats are not taken +from the British Museum copies it may be as well to remark here, and the +variation in the disposition of the light and shade is great in the +various copies, though the outlines are always the same, being printed off +the same plate, of course. The finest known copy of "Jerusalem" was sold +at Messrs. Sotheby's among other Blake treasures belonging to Lord Crewe +for the sum of £83. + +"Milton," the last of the published "Books of Prophecy," produced in 1804, +is a small quarto of forty-five printed pages, coloured by hand in the old +radiant manner. The preface, beautiful but sibylline, is an appeal to all +men to worship and exalt Imagination, which in ancient times in the +Christ-form, says Blake, "walked upon England's mountains green." "Would +to God that all the Lord's people were prophets"--that is "seers"--he +quotes with profound earnestness at the end. + +The "poem" itself opens more intelligibly than most of the later books +with a mythic story concerning one Palamabron and the horses of the +plough; of Satan, who persuaded him to be allowed to drive the horses for +one day, and of the dire confusion, strife, and tragedy resulting from +Palamabron's consent. + +The story bears a distant analogy to the Phaethon myth, for Palamabron +represents, according to Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, the "imaginative +impulse," while Satan is the dark angel who erects the barriers of reason +limited by moral laws and senses around humanity. It was impossible for +one to do the work of the other. + +The definite incidents with which "Milton" so hopefully opens are soon +lost sight of, and the loosely-fitted framework, ill-adjusted and weak, +contains a tangled woof of mysticism, from which the end of the thread is +so difficult of extraction, that I for one must plead that the trouble of +"winding a golden ball" seems hardly worth while, though it is no doubt +possible and profitable to the student of mysticism. Milton's part in the +book is perhaps the hardest to decipher. But we find him undertaking a +journey from heaven, through earth and hell. "Milton" seems specially dear +to Blake because he made Satan the supreme study of his greatest poem. +Blake, as we know, had very original thoughts concerning Satan, and +regarded him as the world's angel of light, a most respectable person +indeed, for he is the enforcer of the moral law as evolved by divided +generative humanity. + +Milton like Blake recognized this highly respectable aspect of Satan, +whereas the world, says our poet in "The Everlasting Gospel," frequently +mistakes Satan for Christ: + + The vision of Christ that thou dost see, + Is my vision's greatest enemy, + +and it creates an abortive kind of hell-bat to take the _rôle_ of +Satan,--a very confused state of affairs, which leads to no little +deception and opacity in men's minds. The old themes of free-love for the +sake of the spirit, and the denunciation of "Nature's cruel holiness," +occupy much of the book, in which the mythic personages, Leutha, Rintrah, +Ololon, and Enitharmon move up and down in dream-like procession. The ease +with which these shadowy beings enter each other's personalities, divide, +and separate again into manifold emanations and spectres, suggest the +multitudinous globes into which a drop of quicksilver may be divided, +uniting again on contact into several large ones, and finally forming the +unit from which they were first divided. Fascinating as is the experiment +with mercury, it becomes confusing and even tiresome when the appearing +and vanishing parties are persons with names and presumably characters. + +One passage full of the old poetical loveliness of which Blake had been +past master must be quoted. It shows that the beauty of nature at Felpham, +with its distracting fascination, entered the soul of the poet, despite +all theories and philosophizings. + + Thou hearest the nightingale begin the Song of Spring: + The lark sitting upon his earthy bed: just as the morn + Appears; listens silent: then springing from the waving cornfield, loud + He leads the choir of Day! trill, trill, trill, trill, + Mounting upon the wings of light into the great expanse: + Re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining shell. + His little throat labours with inspiration, every feather, + On throat and breast and wings vibrates with the effluence divine, + All Nature listens silent to him, and the awful sun + Stands still upon the mountains looking on this little bird, + With eyes of soft humility, and wonder, love and awe. + Then loud from their green covert all the birds begin their song. + The thrush, the linnet and the goldfinch, robin and the wren, + Awake the Sun from his sweet reverie upon the mountains. + The nightingale again assays his song and through the day + And through the night warbles luxuriant: every bird of song + Attending his loud harmony with admiration and love. + +To this passage succeeds another of like beauty, a Flora's Feast of colour +and scent. + + Thou perceivest the flowers put forth their precious odours: + And none can tell how from so small a centre comes such sweet, + Forgetting that within that centre Eternity expands + Its ever-during doors, that Og and Anak fiercely guard. + First ere the morning breaks, joy opens in the flowery bosoms, + Joy even to tears, which the Sun rising dries: first the wild thyme + And meadowsweet downy and soft, waving among the reeds, + Light springing in the air, lead the sweet dance: they wake + The honeysuckle sleeping on the oak: the flaunting beauty + Revels along the wind: the white-thorn, lovely may + Opens her many lovely eyes: listening, the rose still sleeps, + None dare to wake her: soon she bursts her crimson-curtained bed + And comes forth in the majesty of beauty; every flower, + The pink, the jessamine, the wall-flower, the carnation, + The jonquil, the mild lily opes her heavens: every tree + And herb and flower soon fill the ear with an innumerable dance, + Yet all in order sweet and lovely. Men are sick with love. + +Oh! how gladly the ear and heart rest on passages such as these, after +toiling through the arid wilds of non-poetical occultism! + +As usual the illustrations are turned to with keen delight. The iridescent +pages recall the charms of the "Songs of Innocence and Experience." Take +it all in all the colour in this last prophetic book combines a clarity +and brilliance of tone inferior to no other of Blake's. All is careful, +clear and precise, and there are no passages of heavy colouring or impasto +work. + +Forms, elemental, electric, indicative of unknown forces and conditions of +consciousness start from the pages. As in "Jerusalem," every page of +writing is adorned, but the colour adds the necessary charm to the +forceful designs. Plate 15 represents a muscular male--Michael Angelesque +in its modelling--leaping upon a rock and seizing by the shoulders a +languid old man. The young man is Milton, starting on his journey "to +annihilate the selfhood of deceit and false forgiveness." The old man is +Albion seated on the Rock of Ages, his legs immersed in the sea of Time +and Space, his nerveless arms supported on the tables of the Law. Above +them both, on a semi-circular plane of light, the Eternals are seen, +passing in procession in a kind of ecstatic choric dance. Three play on +instruments of music, while two others toss balls of light in joyous +abandon. The rhythmic character of these dancers, their robes fetched out +like clouds upon the wind, and the colour translucent and vivid as that of +a border of April flowers, makes one think of the fair works with which +Luca della Robbia has set the dark old streets of Florence, of which, as +some one has poetically said, they would seem to be the "wall-flowers." + +The two other specially noteworthy plates are full-page designs, entitled +respectively William and Robert. It is evident that they are the spiritual +likenesses of Blake and that younger brother with whom he always +maintained such close communion. A burning star emitting fountains of +light falls beside each brother, while their bodies thrown backwards, and +their faces skywards, seem to indicate the abandon of themselves to +spiritual influences. The senses are not the limits put upon their +perceptions. The Infinite spirit, the "Poetic Genius," thrills through +their entire beings as the sunshine through a dewdrop. + +Let not the profane smile when they learn that the star is in reality +Milton! For it is written, "so Milton's shadow fell Precipitant loud +thundering into the sea of Time and Space." + + Then first I saw him in the zenith as a falling star, + Descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow or swift, + And on my left foot falling on the tarsus, enter'd there. + +So there can be no doubt as to what the star symbolizes in the design. The +articulation, the tense nervous drawing of these two figures is +remarkable, even for Blake, and the light throbbing with rainbow hues, and +the intense darkness, against which it is contrasted, are boldly handled, +while the weird colouring of the dead Robert, whose skin has the tone and +lustre of gun metal, conduce to make these two designs of great +imaginative appeal. Space has only allowed me to call attention to the +most remarkable of the plates in this and the other "Prophetic Books," but +enough has been said to indicate the extraordinary range of their +expression. + + +[Illustration: COLOUR-PRINTED PLATE FROM "MILTON: A POEM IN TWO BOOKS." +1804] + + +To see Blake's work of this kind is to enjoy a new experience. Many of the +pictorial representations we have reviewed seem to be disregardful of +Nature, if one dare say it, _above_ Nature altogether! Yet so clearly are +they discriminated, so minutely are the parts made out, that we are +compelled to realize that they are copied from visions definitely seen +by Blake's inner eye, and energetically seized upon by him. And it is this +quality in them which so powerfully acts on the spectator, assuring him +that indeed "More things exist in heaven and earth than our philosophy +dreams of." But besides these tremendous imaginative creations, there +occur touching and beautiful transcripts from Nature, low-lying hills, +under a great sky, waving field grasses and delicate spiders' webs +accurately observed and represented, as far as they go, proving that Dame +Nature was not so utterly repudiated by Blake but that at times he saw and +loved her for her own sake, in spite of all his theories. + +Still, the great word for him--the only word fit to bear the burden of his +tremendous thoughts--was always, as with Michael Angelo, the human form, +which, in its varieties of type and action, seemed to him alone suited to +express his deep meanings and spiritual ideas. As for the prophecies +themselves, they can never be largely read, nor in any sense popular, +though, to use Mr. W. M. Rossetti's words, "a reader susceptible to poetic +influence cannot make light of them; nor can one who has perused Mr. +Swinburne's essay" (or, we may add, Messrs. Ellis and Yeats' work) "affect +to consider that they lack meaning--positive and important, though not +definite and developed meaning." So now we take leave of these mystic +books of revelation, which, whatever our personal estimate of them may be, +stand alone in literature for intrinsic and unique qualities. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +WORK IN ILLUSTRATION + + +Blake's work in illustration is considered by many persons to be finer +than the embodiment of his original conceptions in art. + +There is perhaps something to be said for this point of view. In the +designs to the "Prophetic Books" his over-heated brain attempted the +production in visible images of conceptions not matured--hints, scraps, +vague but immense suggestions. His unfettered imagination set sail on a +shoreless ocean of speculative thinking, and kept to no recognized course, +made for no definite port. Roaming hither and thither on the wide dim sea +of his ever-shifting thoughts, we sometimes long to see his imagination at +work in a more limited, a more definite area. + +And so when other minds circumscribed this area, giving him a central pole +around which to group his ideas, we find no loss of individuality, no pale +reflection of another's conceptions, but a passionate concentration of +original thinking on the subject prescribed, resulting in the development +of an unsuspected point of view, a new aspect. + +I am not speaking of illustrations such as those he executed as mere +task-work to gain a living, like the engravings to Mary Wollstonecraft's +Stories, or those for Hayley's Ballads. For these subjects had not enough +matter, depth or scope to attract his thoughts or engage his sympathies. +As illustrator to Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Virgil and the Book of Job, +Blake worked with all his best and most characteristic powers under his +command, and the more effective, vital and original for being +concentrated. + +In the same year in which he produced the last of the "London Books of +Prophecy," 1795, we find him illustrating a so-called translation of +Bürger's "Lenore." In spite of the weakness and wilful inaccuracy of the +English version, Blake seized with power on the spirit of the Teutonic +legend, and gave the edition, a copy of which is in the Print Room (a +quarto), three fine designs, of which the first is the most forceful. + +We cannot linger over the designs which Hayley commissioned Blake to +execute for his "Ballads on Animals." From the engraver's point of view +they are specially fine, as the execution is very delicate, and reaches a +state of high finish seldom attempted by Blake. Perhaps he wished to atone +for paucity of inspiration by elaborate labour. Certain it is that he +worked in bonds and trammels. The subjects were not interesting to him. +Hayley might well say, in his lumberingly playful way, that "our good +Blake was in labour with a young lion," when he was engaged on the plate +representing that animal. The labour was immense, for the conception had +no vitality. Blake scourged his imagination into a degree of liveliness +sufficient to make "the Horse" and "the Eagle" arresting and uncommon +work, but the shackles were on his hands, because on his spirit, and he +knew it. + +Young's "Night Thoughts," which we take up next, bears the date 1797. +Blake made no less than five hundred and thirty-seven water-colour +drawings for this poem, but only forty-three designs were eventually +selected for publication, and these were reproduced as uncoloured +engravings. Till a short while ago, Mr. Bain of the Haymarket possessed +the whole series of water-colour drawings, but they have now passed by +purchase into the hands of an American collector. Through the kindness of +Mr. Frederic Shields, who many years ago made tracings and copies from the +unpublished designs, I am enabled to give reproductions of some of the +most striking, though of course not in colour. (It will be remembered that +Mr. Shields wrote the very powerful chapter on Young's "Night Thoughts" +which is included in the second volume of Gilchrist's Life.) The designs +published with the poem are larger than those we are accustomed to see in +Blake's books, and the disposition of them on the pages, of which the +middle is occupied by the printed type enclosed in rectangular spaces, is +not effective. We miss our artist's beautiful fluent writing, and the type +produces a bald staring impression on the beholder. When, too, the head +and shoulders of a figure appear above the placard and the feet and legs +below, as in one or two plates, we are irresistibly reminded of sandwich +men. The want of colour also is a crying need in these large, pale, +somewhat flat plates. The engravings are executed with great lightness, +though with a certain monotony of line. They are slightly shaded, and have +a distinguishing quality of purity and breadth. What luminous conceptions +and stimulating fancies they contain! though it must also be admitted that +there are a few plates which seem unworthy of Blake, being diffuse, tame, +uninspired. + +Plate 16 represents the "Aspiration of the Soul for Immortality" in a +beautiful symbolic female figure holding a lyre and fluttering upward, but +confined to the earth by chains around the ankles. + +Plates 25 and 26 are, perhaps, the most tremendous in the book. In one +Time creeps towards the spectator, while in the other he half-leaps, +half-flies in his headlong course away. + + +[Illustration: TIME SPEEDING AWAY + +Engraved plate from Young's "Night Thoughts," published in 1797] + + +As one turns the pages one is fain to exclaim of the artist that he +breathed the fine thin air of the mountain tops, that indeed he lived "in +the high places of thought." + +I have an impression that Blake drew much of his inspiration from watching +the ever-changing cloud forms of the sky. We know that his designs gained +actually very little from the beautiful natural scenery of Felpham, that +indeed Nature seemed to close round him like a wall. "Natural objects +always did and do weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me," he +wrote in his MS. notes to Wordsworth. Strange words to come from a +painter-poet. A top room in London with a good view of the sky were all +the conditions which he found necessary for the expression of his genius. +In the vastness of the heavens, clear and deeply blue, or peopled with +glistening clouds, or set with large peaceful stars, which spread +themselves before his upward gaze, Blake found that impetus to creation +which most genius finds in nature or humanity. + +He had set himself the task of probing the world of appearances, and +revealing the world of spiritual causes. To say that he succeeded in +representing this pictorially would be to assert that an impossibility had +been achieved, but he got nearer to the goal than any other artist before +or since, not even excepting D. G. Rossetti and G. F. Watts, whose +affinity with Blake's genius is as close as their manifestation of it is +different. + +The better to realize his aim Blake stripped his drawing of everything +that was not essential to the idea he wished to represent. There is never +a single redundant accessory. He never stayed his upward or outward flight +to represent a lovely landscape, woman's dainty dress, flashing jewels, +bloomy fruit. Typical or merely suggested natural scenes under a great sky +are the usual settings of the human forms who were to him, as to his +master Michael Angelo, the only language coherent enough to express the +innerness and the infinity of spirit. + +He seldom chose to inclose his figures in interiors, and such drawings as +he has left of places from which the sky cannot be seen are so rare as to +startle when we come across them. It may be that from Blake Walt Whitman +learned to say, "I swear I will never mention love or death inside a +house." + +The sea fascinated his imagination, and he has left characteristic records +of it. But for the most part that which he saw with his "corporeal eye" +appeared to him as merely the type of what was unseen. He climbed along +the jutting peninsula of sense to its farthest point, where, giddy with +the immensity of the unsuspected forces revealed to him, he clung, neither +angel nor mortal, but partaking to a certain degree of the conditions of +both. When in this mystic condition of consciousness he focussed his mind +on the "Night Thoughts," the pencilled ideas resulting are liberal, +spacious, empyrean. + +But Blake's most forcible and poetical thinking on the subject of Death is +crystallized in the delicately gleaming drawings for Blair's "Grave." + +True, the drawings are not reproduced in Cromek's edition of the poem as +they left Blake's hand. The story of Cromek's mean transaction has already +been retold in these pages. Schiavonetti's plates, beautiful and fluent in +execution as they are, have lost that peculiar rugged character, that +almost galvanic energy which stamp the original drawings with Blake's +hallmark. It must be borne in mind that engraving may alter original +drawings much in the same way as does the transposition of a musical +phrase from the original into a foreign key. The melody is the same, but +the mood of it is different. It becomes dull instead of bright, or +plaintive instead of triumphant. Schiavonetti's transposing of Blake has +made the designs more sweet and less strong, or perhaps less vehement. It +is Blake in a new aspect, one so obviously beautiful that all the world +admits its loveliness. It is Blake arranged for the many, not Blake for +the intimate few! + + +[Illustration: DEATH OF THE STRONG, WICKED MAN, FROM BLAIR'S "GRAVE" + +Engraving by L. Schiavonetti after design by Blake. Published 1808] + + +The stanzas he wrote in dedication to Queen Charlotte form such a fitting +introduction to the plates that we quote them: + + The door of death is made of gold + That mortal eyes cannot behold, + But when the mortal eyes are closed + And cold and pale the limbs reposed, + The soul awakes and wond'ring sees + In her mild hands the golden keys. + The grave is heaven's golden gate, + And rich and poor around it wait. + O Shepherdess of England's fold, + Behold this gate of pearl and gold. + + To dedicate to England's Queen + The visions that my soul has seen, + And, by her kind permission bring, + What I have borne on solemn wing, + From the vast regions of the grave; + Before her throne my wings I wave, + Bowing before my sov'reign's feet. + The grave produced these blossoms sweet, + In mild repose from earthly strife; + The blossoms of eternal life. + +And now Blake comes to close quarters with the subject that had haunted +him all his life, the dark web on which he had woven so many bright, +half-defined fancies. + +Again we discern a _point d'appui_ between him and Michael Angelo. The +thoughts of neither of them were long away from death. Michael Angelo +wrestled with the dark angel and brought away from the encounter the +profound and intimate thoughts that he has enshrined in the Medici Tombs +of San Lorenzo. Never has the human soul--save perhaps +Beethoven's--apprehended more closely the mystery, the terror, the mingled +shrinking and awe of the grave, yet at the same time its hope, than he did +in the Sacristy of the Medici Chapel. And in all plastic art, the only +things to which these fateful sculptures may be likened in their qualities +of rapt and sincere thinking, united to imagination and insight, are the +designs, which Blake made to illustrate Blair's "Grave." + +The great Florentine, it is true, wrought colossally in enduring marble +before all the world, while the obscure Blake, two centuries later, traced +out his thoughts on paper, his designs being known to comparatively few +persons; but the conceptions of the two brains are allied, and the works +of the two hands are own brothers. + +Blair's conventional and smooth verses in Blake's case have nothing to do +with the matter. They merely form the pegs on which he cast the great +garment of his thoughts. Death--the Grave!--his intense and fervent spirit +so brooded on the subject that the result is no mere illustration of +Blair's text, but invention. The poem in his handling has enlarged itself +out of all knowledge, and turned to us an unfamiliar face, new and +enriching conceptions. Blair merely indicated the track on which his +pioneer spirit journeyed heedfully and musingly, through the dim country +of Death. Piercing all conventions, all accepted theology, he would fain +seize the very heart of the elusive mystery. "What _is_ Death?" he asks; +"let me peer into the grave unshrinkingly and see for myself." And from +the grave he brings this triumphant answer, "Death is Life, this Life only +is Death; you have but to die to conquer Death"; or in Walt Whitman's +prosaic but arresting phrase, "To die is different from what anyone +supposes, and luckier." + +We reproduce the most significant of the plates. + +In "The Soul exploring the Recesses of the Grave," we see a shuddering yet +resolved man determinately bringing himself to the close contemplation of +death. He remains above the vault on the hillside trying to pierce the +moonlit earth with his limited human vision; but his imagination, his +soul, penetrates where he cannot enter--yet! + +In the likeness of a fair woman with a lamp, like the Greek Psyche, she +tiptoes delicately into the arched hollow beneath the hill, and gazes +alarmed but steadfast on a dead body wrapped in flickering flames. It is +to be noted that the man whose soul regards death so closely is already on +the mountain tops, he has "lifted up his eyes unto the hills," and his +figure set against the sky has an indefinable air of separateness from +ordinary humanity. + +The plate entitled "The Soul hovering over the Body reluctantly parting +with Life" satisfies with a strange and unearthly delight. No Diana ever +hung more yearningly above her Endymion than this beautiful and tender +soul lingers, in loving reluctance to part, above the stiff human tenement +she has just quitted. Presently she will take her darting flight through +the window and over the mountains and up into the illimitable glory of the +distant sunrise. There is the hush and the blessedness of a great silence +on this dim silver dawn, suggesting the spiritual correspondence between +it and the dawning life of the newly-released soul. Was it a recollection +of that younger brother, Robert, so dearly loved, that taught Blake the +pathetic dignity of the composed limbs, the sculptured calm of the dead +face? + +The "Death of the Strong Wicked Man" is a savage contrast to the peace, +the musical pause, of the last-mentioned design. + +In "Milton," Blake writes: + + Judge then of thyself; thy Eternal Lineaments explore, + What is eternal and what changeable, and what annihilable. + +And he answers the question in the forms given to these passing souls, +some being closely analogous to their mortal appearances, others changing +even to sex, while others again have passed from age into a state of +perpetual youth. + +This latter is the case in the plate called "Death's Door." "Age on +crutches is hurried by a tempest into the open door of the Grave, while +above sits a young man--'the renovated man in light and glory'--his +beautiful young head thrown up to the sky, his mouth full of inspired +song, his whole virile body expressing ideal beauty, rapture, glad new +life." + +No one but Michael Angelo could have drawn with strong felicitous hand the +glorious youth atop of the grave as Blake has done. The whole allegory is +so intellectually definite, so succinctly expressed that thought and its +body form are here identical. But the strangest flower of his thoughts on +the grave, blossoms in the picture called "The Re-Union of the Soul and +the Body." Descending like a bolt from the blue, cleaving the smoke +ascending from the fires of consuming materialism, the soul embraces with +passionate joy the strong male body, which struggles from the grave to +enfold her. Cleansing and fusing fires flame around them. The beauty of +the drawing--the melodious curves of the downward plunging "soul," the +delicious foreshortening of the leg, the swirl of the white drapery--has +stricken into poetic lines the forcefulness of flight, the passion of +re-union. This emotional conception moves the heart strangely. It is the +promise of St. Paul here visibly consummated, that a spiritual body shall +at last clothe the shivering unhoused soul. + + +[Illustration: THE SOUL RELUCTANTLY PARTING FROM THE BODY, FROM BLAIR'S +"GRAVE" + +Engraving by L. Schiavonetti after design made by Blake. Published 1808] + + +"States change," Blake wrote, "but Individual Identities never change nor +cease." + +And now take last of all, but not least, the plate called the "Day of +Judgment." Nothing daunted by the long array of "Last Judgments" that have +been executed from Orcagna to Michael Angelo, Blake must needs give _his_ +rendering of the subject; and an original one it is, though he can hardly +avoid--even _he_!--the traditional disposition of the main parts of the +picture. + +But what freshness, what new life and new motives he has introduced into +this subject, hoary with extreme age. The spirits ascending into Paradise +are as lovely as heart and eye of man could wish. Orcagna's conception of +the beatified souls in Santa Maria, whose profiles Ruskin likened to +"lilies laid together in a garden border," is not more delightful in its +artless way than is Blake's. The children of wrath, snake-encircled, +howling, and falling head foremost into the abyss, recall the terrors, the +uncouth and wild imagination of "Urizen" and one of the plates in +"America." But here Schiavonetti's graceful and civilizing hand has passed +over each figure, and he has contrived in some indefinable way to smooth +away the too austere and savage strength of this latest born of the "_Dies +illa_" of art. + +I have not mentioned the first plate, which represents Christ with the +Keys of the Grave in his hand, because my function is chiefly that of +praise. But I ought perhaps to point out, what is however painfully +obvious, that Blake always failed in any attempt to represent Jesus. +Whether he was hampered to a degree beyond his strength of liberation by +the traditional likeness, the type ascribed to the Saviour, and so could +not work in freedom, it is impossible to say authoritatively. But this +traditional face of Christ, ploughed as it is into the heart and memory of +humanity, probably arose and disturbed his own soul's independent vision +whenever he tried to fix his imagination on the ideal lineaments. + +If this were the case, then indeed it is proved beyond question that +Blake's work is almost valueless when it is not dependent on his own naked +perceptions, his inward recognition of facts, disregardful of all outward +corroboration. + +Blake's next work in illustration was done for Dr. Thornton, who projected +an English edition of Virgil's "Pastorals" for the use of schools, with +Ambrose Philips' imitation of Virgil's first eclogue. They were the first +and the only woodcuts Blake ever did, and though they bear traces of an +unpractised hand, "he put to proof art alien to the artists," and showed +his essential mastery of this means of expression in a manner which more +than reconciles one to his slight defects of method. + +Gilchrist is of opinion that the original designs were a little +marred--lost somewhat in expression and drawing in transference to the +wood; but Mr. Laurence Binyon, who has lately studied them closely, and +has reproduced them with admirable truth, holds a different opinion. He +writes, "Blake's conceptions in these illustrations did not take their +final form in the drawings; they were only fully realized on the block +itself. Hence they have the character of visions called up as if by +moonlight out of the darkened surface of the wood, and seem to have no +existence apart from it." + +They instance the power Blake had in a remarkable degree of concentrating +in a few types the essence of his subject. In these blocks it is pastoral +life--flocks feeding in lonely stretches of country, the still peace of +hills, the might of tempest--that he concentrates and expresses by the +roughly executed but exquisitely felt little scenes which are the +consummation of his insight into the large natural life of the earth. + + +[Illustration: BLAKE'S WOODCUTS, FROM HIS OWN DESIGNS, TO PHILLIP'S +"VIRGIL'S PASTORALS." 1821] + + +Blake did in these woodcuts, what he could never have achieved, had he +sought to do so, in any other of the branches of art practised by +him,--namely, he gave truthful because extremely simple impressions of +Nature as she appears in her rarer moods. Master as he was of linear +design, he was too neglectful of tonic values to interpret with any +delicacy the effects of landscape in water-colour or engraving. But here, +the very nature and limitations of woodcutting, its necessary economy of +means, enabled him for once to express effectively and adequately his +great simple generalized impressions. + +These pregnant suggestions of his induce a mood sympathetic with the +deeper and subtler chords of pantheism. + +In one of the most beautiful, but at the same time one of the simplest of +the blocks, all the witchery and solemn charm of a remote pastoral +neighbourhood is represented in a few typical rural images. + +A solitary traveller journeys along a road winding deep between hills, in +the last beams of the setting sun. Blake has endowed this darkened +landscape with I know not what suggestions of watchful intentness. The +wayfarer in some mysterious manner is in its power! + + Hands unseen + Are hanging the night around him fast. + +And again: + + The place is silent and aware, + It has had its scenes, its joy and crimes, + But that is its own affair. + +These words of Browning's are singularly apt to express the delicate and +profound hints in this little woodcut. The wonderful thing is that Blake +_could_ convey so much on a slip of paper about three inches by one and a +half in size. + +In all the plates we find this strange accent laid on Nature, her +awareness, her sombre fateful moods, her listening, and the long patience +of her endless waiting. The oft-repeated motive of the shepherding of +flocks is treated in no glib or merely idyllic manner, but has the sort of +holy peace that befits that most ancient and most gentle of all the +occupations of men. + +An appreciative critic has said anent these woodcuts, that they prove +conclusively that "amid all drawbacks there exists a power in the work of +the man of genius which no one but himself can utter fully." + +The truth of this remark must be felt by all Blake's admirers with double +force and poignancy when they think regretfully of Blair's "Grave," +wherein the designs, being engraved by another hand than the father of +them, have lost some indefinable note of character belonging to Blake's +personality. + +And now we come to the greatest series of engravings on a religious +subject that have appeared since Albrecht Dürer. The inventions to "Job" +are the crown of glorious achievement on the strenuous and austere life of +the artist-poet, and of all his work there is nothing so perfect in the +dramatic development of the subject, the broad, forceful yet delicate +execution, and the poetic sensibility which animates the entire series. + +It appears that Blake's lifelong friend, Mr. Butts, bought from him a +series of twenty-one water-colour drawings or "Inventions" from the Book +of Job. + +(This set of drawings, be it remarked, together with twenty-two brilliant +proof impressions on India paper of the engravings afterwards made from +them, were sold to Mr. Quaritch on March 31st, 1903, at the sale of the +Crewe collection of Blake's works, for the sum of £5,600.) + +I have seen one water-colour (presumably not one of the original set done +for Thomas Butts, though probably a repliqua) of Satan pouring a vial +containing the plague of boils on the prostrate body of Job. It is +interesting to compare it with the final form the design assumed in the +engraving (Plate 6 in the Book of Job) done for John Linnell. Owing to the +courtesy of Sir Charles Dilke, to whom the picture now belongs, we have +been enabled to reproduce it. It will at once be seen that, in the +engraving the management of the light is more satisfactory, because it is +comprehensible, than in the water-colour; while the cloud-forms are less +conventional and rounder. The bat-like wings with which Satan is furnished +in the painting have been sacrificed in the engraving. Job's wife has been +put into tone, whereas in the water-colour, the visible side of her, which +ought to have been in dense shadow, was in full light. The whole design +has been pulled together, gaining an impressiveness and unity altogether +wanting in the earlier work. Blake's passion for "determinate outline" +(irrespective of its appearance in Nature), and contempt for truth of tone +in colour, gives the water-colour a mapped-out definitive appearance in +its background of scenery,--despite the magnificent qualities of +imagination and draughtsmanship displayed in the treatment of the +figures,--which somehow recalls the work of such masters as Paolo Uccello. + +Mr. Linnell, deeply impressed with the lofty and imaginative character of +the water-colours done for Mr. Butts, commissioned a complete set of +engravings to be executed from them by Blake's hand, for which he paid +£150 in instalments of £2 to £3 weekly--the largest sum Blake had ever +received for any one series. + +On glancing through them it will at once be noticed that his style of +engraving had undergone a change during the last period of his life. + +"The Canterbury Pilgrimage," which he had executed fifteen years +previously, exhibited the old hard and dry manner of engraving which he +had adopted from Basire in its most accentuated form. (For the convenience +of classification I have included that picture among the loose drawings, +engravings, and water-colours for consideration in a later chapter, but it +would be well for the student to look at it now, the better to appreciate +the freedom, grace and power of the engravings in the "Job" series.) + +On one of the many pleasant days Blake spent with Linnell at North End, +Hampstead, the latter showed him some choice engravings of Marc Antonio +and his pupil Bononsoni, and from this latter's work Blake suddenly +apprehended the possibilities, the scope, that lay for him in the +engraver's art. In the school of Basire much of the work was accomplished +by a laborious and indiscriminate process of cross-hatching. + +It is true that Blake by the sheer force of his genius had made this style +answer in a manner to his needs of expression, but it was work performed +in an unnecessarily confined technique. + +When he came to study the Italian school of engraving he found to his +delight that every stroke was made to tell. Nothing blotchy or muddled, no +careless cross-hatching, no "lozenges or dots" were admitted, and Blake +quickly appreciated the wider range of effects obtainable by this Italian +manner, and engrafted its main principles on to his own characteristic +style. Of that characteristic style, as we know, the beauty of outline, +the care for its preservation whenever possible, was the main principle. +And here in the school of Marc Antonio and Bononsoni he found that +principle adopted as the basis of beauty in engraving, every other +consideration being made subservient to it. The conflict and want of unity +of effect, resultant on making compromises with other principles of +art,--such as subtlety of modelling, delicate distinctions in values, +imitation of textures, intricacy of detail,--had not disturbed the dignity +of the Italian school, which consciously sacrificed variety and a wide +range of effects in order to keep the work of the burin as broad and +simple as possible, the outline always being insisted on as the chief +subject of alterations, while the shading and modelling were +comprehensively indicated by long curved lines, close together, only +crossing and intersecting in the darkest parts. The beauty and freedom of +the "Job" engravings are a revelation of the final grace and power +achieved by Blake through his appreciation of the legitimate functions of +an art pre-eminently concerned with line. + + +[Illustration: PLATE II FROM "THE BOOK OF JOB" + +Engraving, published March, 1825] + + +The Book of Job is one of the world's great epics. It voices man's need of +belief in God; it is the cry of one pierced to death with the arrows of +misfortune, yet asserting with passionate faith, "Though He slay me, yet +will I trust in Him." Earthquake, famine, bereavements, pestilence cannot +eradicate from man the deep-rooted assurance that God not only exists, but +is just and loving, and the Book of Job is the supreme poetical expression +of this fundamental belief. + +As such, it welded itself into Blake's imagination, and the designs he +made to illustrate it are worthy in all respects to be set alongside the +ancient tragic text. + +Plate 1 represents Job, his wife, and their sons and daughter kneeling +around them, praising God at the rising of the sun. Their flocks and herds +surround them, and a noble tree--on which their musical instruments are +hung--overshadows them; in the background, at the base of rocky hills, a +Gothic cathedral is daringly set, to typify the soul of worship made +visible. "Thus did Job continually." The border that surrounds the +finely-wrought plate is very slight but decorative and thoughtful. An +altar with a flaming sacrifice upon it is indicated, with these words +inscribed upon its front: + + The letter killeth, + The Spirit giveth Life, + It is spiritually discerned. + +While, above, the words, + + Our Father which art in Heaven, + Hallowed be Thy name, + +set the keynote to the whole work. + +Plate 2 contains no less than twenty-three figures, and two scenes are +being enacted simultaneously. + +Job and his wife still sit beneath the tree with their children, but above +them we see the heavens open and God giving power to Satan, who strides +like Urizen through flame, to test the uprightness of His servant Job. +"This was the day when the sons of God came to present themselves before +the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before God." +The border is exquisite, light as gossamer, and containing in its fine +web-like lines beautiful suggestions. Angels with heads bent beneath +Gothic tracery receive the flame and smoke that are the thought-sacrifices +of two shepherds, who mind the sleeping flocks in their fold. The next two +plates are (3) the Destruction of the Children of Job, and (4) the +reception of the news by Job and his wife. + +Plate 5 is one of the finest of the series. Job and his wife, sitting on +the ruins of their home, give of their straitened means to the blind and +halt, while "the angels of their love and resignation," as Gilchrist +sympathetically terms them, hallow and beautify the scene. But above, the +Almighty sits enthroned, with an expression almost remorseful, and the +angels shrink away in horror, for He has given Satan leave to try Job +to the uttermost, only reserving his life. "Behold he is in thy hand, but +save his life." Satan, with face averted from the sublime spectacle of Job +in his affliction, has concentrated the fires of God into a phial which he +is about to pour on his head. + + +[Illustration: PLATE V FROM "THE BOOK OF JOB," 1825 + +Engraving] + + +The border is symbolically woven with writhing snakes and thorn-set +brambles, among which quick darting flames find their way upwards. + +And then follow Plates 6, 7, 8, the workings of the Evil One, the coming +of the three friends to Job, and Job raising himself in agony and uttering +the frantic words, "Lo, let the night be solitary and let no joyful voice +come therein, let the day perish wherein I was born." This suggests +"thoughts beyond the reaches of the soul." Then follows the Vision of +Eliphaz--very terrible and grand--and Plate 10, "The Just Upright Man is +laughed to scorn," in which Job's attitude, the dignity of his grief and +faith, are magnificent. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," is +expressed in every line of the noble, piteous figure. + +Plate 11--"With Dreams upon my bed thou scarest me and affrightest me with +Visions"--has something mediaeval in the grotesqueness and ingeniousness +of the horrors depicted. Orcagna's devils, Dürer's "Death and Satan" are +not more terrible than Job's tormentors. The words engraved in the border +contain all the condensed pain of the race of man, as well as the faith +which alone makes it possible to be endured. + +And then to all this "storm and stress" succeeds Plate 12, with its +suggestions of returning peace and the everlasting calm of the stars. "Lo, +all these things worketh God oftentimes with Man to bring back his Soul +from the pit to be enlightened with the light of the living!" says the +inspired young man to Job, who with the seal of a great suffering set on +his face--but a suffering of which the bitterness is past--sits listening +intently as one who suddenly receives light in his soul. The sonorous +penetrating words fall on the senses like the music of rain-drops on a +thirsty land, and the design grows out of them like a true organic form of +which the shape is innate. Oh! the peace of that night sky, and the gentle +radiance of the stars set in its depth! + +The border is here specially beautiful. "Look upon the heavens, and behold +the clouds which are higher than thou"--words that found a responsive echo +in the heart of Blake--is the verse inscribed on the robe of a sleeping +old man. The border is quick with winged thoughts, floating upwards from +his head, in the shape of small men and women, linked in a sinuous +succession, which finally reaches a sky, also set with stars, whose clouds +have verses written upon them that contribute to a full understanding of +Job. + +Plate 13, "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind," continues the +gracious and softening influences of the last design. Job and his wife, +with tremulous eager hope, look up into the mild face of God, who, clothed +and enwreathed by a whirlwind of which Blake only could have suggested the +marvellous vortex, stretches His arms in blessing above them. The three +friends are prostrated and overwhelmed beneath the force of the blast that +encloses God. + +And now we come to Plate 14, than which nothing can be imagined more +beautiful. "When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God +shouted for joy," are the words beneath and around the border; the six +days of creation are indicated in six delicate medallions, which _may_ in +their turn have suggested the noble series of paintings, of ample scope +and poetic imagining, which Sir Edward Burne-Jones executed. + + +[Illustration: PLATE XIV FROM "THE BOOK OF JOB," 1825 + +Engraving] + + +But the main design--God, the centre of the universe, from whom issues Day +and Night, the listening rapt group of Job, his wife, and the +comforters, and, above all, the glorious rejoicing ranks of angels--is +beautiful almost beyond expression. It is noticeable that on either side +appears the arm alone of an angel outside the picture, thus cleverly +suggesting the idea of an infinity of this heavenly host. Mrs. Jamieson, +in her "Christian Art," says, "The most original and, in truth, the only +new and original version of the scripture idea of angels which I have met +with is that of William Blake, a poet-painter, somewhat mad as we are +told, if indeed his madness were not rather 'the telescope of truth,' a +sort of poetical clairvoyance, bringing the unearthly nearer to him than +others. + +"His adoring angels float rather than fly, and with their half-liquid +draperies seem about to dissolve into light and love; and his rejoicing +angels--behold them!--sending up their voices with the morning stars, that +'singing in their glory move!'" + +The picture has the thrill, the immensity of music in it, and I never look +at it without recalling the motive of the last movement of the Choral +Symphony. + +[Music] + +It resolves all the human suffering, all the incoherent and striving +emotions, all the diverse and multiform forces of the Book of Job, into a +final harmony and triumph of beauty. + +In much the same way the last motive of Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" rings +forth after the tentative, subtle and passionate music of the preceding +movements like a shout of joy, the cry of a faith which says--not, "I +have heard, I have learnt, I believe," but, "I _know_! absolutely and for +ever!" + +Plate 15 shows God pointing out the works that His hand has fashioned. +"Behemoth" and Leviathan, in a circular design very Gothic in character, +appear below. And to this succeeds Plate 16, "Satan Falling." + +Plate 17, in which God appears blessing Job and his wife, while the false +comforters hide their diminished heads with an almost comic fright, is +distinguished by another of those fine effects of light for which Blake +had so great an aptitude. The sun, which forms the nimbus of God's head, +emits strange prismatic rays, very beautiful and weird. "Also the Lord +accepted Job" shows us Job with his wife and friends offering a fire on an +altar before a great sun, which, like God's halo in the previous picture, +flashes the same strange light. The design is calm and solemn, and has an +exquisite decorative feeling. Immediately below the altar, on some steps +which form part of the border, Blake has touchingly and humbly laid his +own palette and brushes, as if to indicate that, like Job, his work had +been offered and accepted by the Lord. + +In Plate 19 Job and his wife are seated beneath a fig-tree in a field of +standing corn, gratefully receiving offerings from a father and mother and +their two beautiful daughters. + +"Everyone also gave him a piece of money." The border contains, as usual, +amid its palm leaves and angelic figures, verses relating to and assisting +the chief motive of the picture. + +For pure melodious beauty perhaps there is no plate like 20. "There were +not found women fair as the daughters of Job in all the land, and their +father gave them inheritance among their brethren." Job is seated in a dim +rich chamber, on whose walls are wrought paintings illustrating the trials +he has experienced. Around him are grouped three beautiful daughters, who +listen rapt while he relates to them God's dealings with him. + +This is a rare example of Blake's choosing an interior with no opening out +into the beyond. It is quaint and beautiful, but we are so accustomed to +seeing Blake's figures set in the open air with the sky above them, that +this closed-in chamber, exquisitely wrought and fantastic as it is, seems +a thing foreign to his usual methods, his elective affinity for the great +expansive types of God's universe. I think the reason he chose an interior +in this instance was that we might be shut in and enclosed within the mind +of Job as it revealed itself to his daughters. Instinctively we know that +Blake's true lover Rossetti must have cared for this plate with quite +special fervour, so close is the analogy between its hidden mysterious +richness and the wonderful painted interiors in which he set his women, +and from which he developed such a high degree of romantic suggestion and +atmosphere. A lute and harp amid trailing vines, grape-laden, form a +border to Blake's design, as delicate as the illuminated tracery in a +mediaeval Hour-Book. In the final plate--"So the Lord blessed the latter +end of Job more than the beginning"--the hole of the great tree that has +figured in so many of the designs is surrounded by a crowd of persons, +with Job, his wife and beautiful daughters in the midst. All play on +instruments of music, while sheep and lambs and (it must be admitted) a +most Gothic-looking sheep-dog repose in the immediate foreground. The +ancient and fantastic instruments, the rapt upraised faces, the beautiful +girls, recall the old Florentine singing galleries--cantorias as they are +called--the one by Donatello and the other by Luca della Robbia, now in +the Museo del Duomo at Florence. In neither has the joy of praise, the +delight in making music, found more complete expression. + +Blake's "Book of Job" is a holy thing. The full compass of his orchestral +nature exerted itself for this final effort. All his long sacrifices, +deprivations, passionate sorrows and sacred joys, his burning aspirations +and his steadfast faith, found their true meaning, their perfect +consecration in the blossoming of this supreme flower on his tree of life. +It was Blake's offering to God, like the Sacred Host, reserved and offered +up in his own hands on the altar of his storm-weary heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +WORK IN THE EXHIBITION OF 1904 + + +In the January of 1904 Messrs. Carfax's tiny galleries at 17, Ryder +Street, St. James's, became a shrine to which all pious lovers of William +Blake hastened to make their pilgrimage. None of the usual crowd that +visit picture shows were to be descried here. + +Blake's appreciators are not those who are most learned in schools of +painting, in tricks of style and niceties of technique. They are mainly +composed of those who, having a strong pictorial sense, are yet only +effectively moved by _ideas_ in art. + +And what a harvest of ideas was garnered here!--ideas which sprung like +Athene fully developed and armed from the head of Blake--of which head a +cast taken by Deville the phrenologist was conspicuously placed in the +centre of the lower room of the exhibition. The closely-set mouth and jaw, +arched and inflated nostrils, massy brow, and intense and rapt expression, +tell one something of the nature of this rare and spiritual intellect. + +Out of forty-one exhibits, twenty-five were subjects from the Bible, three +were single plates repeated from Blake's "Prophetic Books," one was an +Indian ink drawing illustrating a scene in his poem "Tiriel," three were +purely imaginative compositions, the keys to which were to be sought in +themselves, and seven were illustrations to the poets (three of Milton's +"Paradise Lost," one of a scene in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's +Dream," and three sketches to illustrate Gray, Young, and Blair). Mainly, +then, the exhibition might be said to have dealt with Biblical subjects, +though good specimens of all kinds of Blake's work rendered it +representative of his genius in its various phases. + +From the old Byzantine mosaicists through art's early springtime to her +full summer in the Renaissance, and even since then, no class of subjects +has so deeply occupied the mind of painters as sacred history. There are +no incidents left untreated in the New Testament, and the Old has had a +large meed of attention, yet we find a painter of such unique and peculiar +genius as William Blake expending his strength and invention on this +well-worn field of motives. But with results so new, so different from +anything ever achieved before, that our interest and delight were +stimulated in proportion to our susceptibility to Blake's influence. I am +not saying that this new treatment of Biblical subjects, of the Gospel +story, is finer than the work of the old masters of the golden age of +Italy. Nor do I rank it lower. "The ages are all equal," Blake says +himself, "but genius is always above its age." The great point is that it +is entirely _different_, and that it exhibits a total disregard for +traditional treatment. Blake only found it _possible_ to see these +subjects from his own point of view--one never before attained by any +artist. And as objects seen from different outlooks vary in colour, +profile, and proportion, so as to be sometimes quite unrecognizable, so do +these religious pictures of Blake's appear startlingly alien to any we +have ever seen before. Or as he puts it himself, "If perceptive organs +vary, objects of perception seem to vary too." + +Looking round the characteristic and representative collection, the +ingenuous student realized that the predominant effect of this art on his +mind was one of _strangeness_. It seemed to him unconnected with the +past, unrelated to the present, an art set apart, unique, somewhat +disquieting, which took him into Blake's visionary world, opposed in every +sense to the natural world of daily experience. This visionary world of +Blake's, was minutely discriminated by him, however, and was no formless +region of emasculating dreams. + +The amazing vigour of his conceptions, and the flat contradiction which +they impose on the orthodox and traditional images which most people's +minds unconsciously harbour, added a sense of shock to that of +strangeness. Inquiring yet further into the causes of this impression one +discovered the truth of W. B. Scott's assertion, that Blake's genius was +unaided by its usual correlative, talent--that facility which enthrones +the idea in its appropriately wrought shrine, dowers it with its +organically perfect form. Greatly as Blake disliked it to be said, the +truth was apparent among these collected works of his, that his execution +was seldom equal to his invention. As proof of the strangeness, the +independence of his work, we may quote the water-colour drawing of the +"Three Maries with the Angel at the Sepulchre" (date 1803), in which the +holy women shrink terrified from the angel, with all the shuddering horror +that humanity feels at the manifestations of the spiritual world. A small +colour-print from "Urizen"--called here "The Flames of Furious +Desire"--with which we are already very familiar, must have augmented the +impression of unique imagination and strangeness to those who had no +previous acquaintance with Blake's work. + +The furious raging, the vital majesty of the water-colour called "Fire," +the delicate and curious imagination in "Satan watching the Endearments of +Adam and Eve," with many others must have contributed to this effect; but +the final strangeness and most curious beauty were to be found in "The +Nativity," "The River of Life," and "The Bard." In these, Blake's highest +and most mystic qualities are manifest, and his divergence from all +preconceived ideas startlingly apparent. "The Nativity" is a small tempera +picture painted on copper without the usual foundation of gesso that Blake +first laid on the plate. Small patches of tempera have been dislodged, +showing little gleaming bits of copper, but happily this has occurred +mainly at the top part of the picture in the gloom of the roof of the +stable. All the long succession of Nativities from Giotto to Correggio +("the soft and effeminate and consequently most cruel demon," as Blake +termed him) seem not to have touched his imagination. Most artists carry +an "infused remembrance" of great pictures in their mind, and can seldom +divest themselves of the subtle influence emanating therefrom. But Blake's +picture is not in any sense a composition which even unconsciously has +been built up with the aid of memory. Imagination has here become vision, +the uncovering of the veritable image; and Blake has faithfully copied +what his entranced consciousness beheld. + +Mary, white as the lilies of her annunciation, has fallen back fainting +into the arms of Joseph, while above her prostrate body, "a mist of the +colour of fire" would seem to have gradually taken form and become +incarnate in the exquisite beauty of the infant Jesus. Light as +thistledown and shining like a star, so that the whole chamber--with the +terrified Joseph, the white mother, the oxen feeding--are all illuminated +by its intense radiance--this apotheosis of divinity in childhood takes +flight to the outstretched arms of St. Elizabeth, who sits on the floor +with a quaint little St. John praying in her lap. The open window through +which is discerned the star in the East, takes the imagination out into +the night of limitless mystery. + + +[Illustration: THE NATIVITY + +Tempera painting on copper. This reproduction is taken from W. B. Scott's +etching from the original picture. It is undated] + + +The technique is superior to most of Blake's work in tempera, and is +adequate, the rendering of light in the picture containing qualities +nothing short of marvellous. + +It was impossible to look at this "Nativity" without being moved. The +event appeared to Blake entirely supernatural in effect as in cause. He +seems to have attached no historical value to it, nor indeed to any of his +Biblical subjects. They were to him merely symbols of eternal ideas, +projected by the Holy Ghost into the world for its enlightenment, and of +these ideas Christ was the chiefest; but every idea he thought capable of +manifesting itself equally in diverse symbols. His mind had some of the +contemplative and impersonal characteristics of the oriental, and by its +original processes he was enabled to appreciate the true inwardness of +Christianity as the western mind cannot do. Christianity was born in the +East like the Star of its Epiphany, and has come to maturity in the West, +but its most mystical secrets will be hid from us until it has returned +again and bathed in the immemorial symbolism and true occultism of the +East. + +Being so unfortunate as not to obtain leave from the "Nativity's" present +owner to reproduce it in these pages, I have been obliged to take our +illustration from the etching which William Bell Scott made after the +original, and for which permission was courteously granted me by Messrs. +Chatto and Windus. It is but the shadow of a shadow, for Bell Scott's +etching is only that, but it will serve to give some idea of the solemn +beauty of the tempera painting. + +Now let me recall another purely imaginative composition. + +"The River of Life," a water-colour picture, reminded me in its +transparence and delicate brilliance of Blake's earlier printed books. + +It is a rhapsody of Heaven. The River of Life which flows through the City +of God, and in which all new-born souls are dipped, is a mighty stream +flowing between green banks, on which are situated the gleaming houses of +the city. Groups of happy souls wander beside the clear pale waters, and +with his back towards us the Saviour with two children (new-born souls) in +either hand swims towards the river's source, which is the Throne of God, +typified by the sun. In its rays may be descried adoring angels, reminding +us of Blake's ardent words, which I have already quoted, "What! it will be +questioned, when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire, +somewhat like a guinea?" "Oh, no, no! I see an innumerable company of the +heavenly host crying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!'" + +Two angels--angels of the presence--remain suspended in flight above the +stream on either side, playing on pipes, while a beautiful strong woman, +clad in lemon-yellow robe, swoops down like a bird just above the surface +of the stream with lithe strenuous body bent to meet the wind. She is a +delicious creation, satisfying the aesthetic sense with completeness. The +disposition of the figures in this picture, the decorative arrangement of +the overhanging fruit-laden branches of the Tree of Life, the clear treble +notes of colour, made one think of the rare and iridescent art of Japan. +Blake's mood when he painted "The River of Life" must have attained to a +high and heavenly unity and joy. + +"The Bard" is a picture of quite another order, and pitched in a very +different key. Here is a twilight world of intellectual notions and poetic +motives wafted hither and thither on the blast of the Bard's frenzy. The +Bard himself, a commanding figure, stands on a shelf of rock surveying the +vortex, while he smites music from his harp. Below, a king and queen and +their horses are overwhelmed in a Stygian stream. All is dark, with a +strange gleam and shimmer here and there, like jewels and burnished silver +seen through a purple veil. This was one of the pictures that appeared in +Blake's own exhibition in his brother's shop, and his description in the +celebrated catalogue is well worth quotation: + + On a rock whose haughty brow + Frown'd o'er old Conway's foaming flood, + Robed in sable garb of evil + With haggard eyes the Poet stood: + Loose his beard and hoary hair + Streamed like a meteor of the troubled air. + Weave the warp and weave the woof, + The winding-sheet of Edward's race. + +Thus the poet Gray; and Blake commented, "Weaving the winding-sheet of +Edward's race by means of sounds of spiritual music, and its accompanying +expressions of spiritual speech, is a bold and daring and most masterly +conception that the public have embraced and approved with avidity. + +"Poetry consists in these conceptions, and shall painting be confined to +the sordid drudgery of facsimile representations of merely mortal and +perishing substances, and not be as poetry and music are, elevated to its +own proper sphere of invention and visionary conception? No, it shall not +be so! Painting as well as poetry and music exists and exults in immortal +thoughts. + +"The connoisseurs and artists who have made objections to Mr. Blake's mode +of representing spirits with real bodies would do well to consider that +the Venus, the Minerva, the Jupiter, the Apollo, which they admire in +Greek statues are all of them representations of spiritual existences--of +gods immortal--to the ordinary perishing organ of sight; and yet they are +embodied and organized in solid marble. Mr. Blake requires the same +latitude and all is well. King Edward and Queen Eleanor are prostrated +with their horses at the foot of the rock on which the Bard +stands--prostrated by the terrors of his harp, on the margin of the river +Conway, whose waves bear up a corpse of a slaughtered bard at the foot of +the rock. The armies of Edward are seen winding among the mountains. + + He wound with toilsome march his long array! + +"Mortimer and Gloucester lie spellbound behind the King. The execution of +this picture is also in water-colours or fresco," he added finally. It was +probably painted in water-colours with white of egg or glue on a medium of +gesso. The gloomy glory of its colour was a thing to ponder on. Like the +dim silvery splendour of a pearl seen in the twilight of deep-sea waters, +so does it glint and gleam. In no picture has Blake brought home to us +more directly the visible population of the world of his mind--its power +and grandeur and mystery--than in the complex imagery of this great work. + +The picture was probably painted in 1785, and was exhibited at the Royal +Academy. It afterwards appeared again at Blake's own exhibition in 1809. +It is a sad thing that he so seldom dated the pictures which he executed +for his staunch friend and supporter Mr. Butts. The pictures in the +Exhibition, with a very few exceptions, were originally done for him, but +few of them could have an authentic date affixed to them. All Blake's +original methods of working were here represented by splendid examples. + +First there are the tempera pictures, or "frescoes," as he termed them. He +would never paint in oil-colour, because he thought and wrote that "oil, +being a body itself, will drink, or absorb very little colour, and +changing yellow, and at length brown, destroys every colour it is mixed +with, especially every delicate colour. It turns every permanent white to +a yellow or brown putty, and has compelled the use of that destroyer of +colour, white lead, which when its protecting oil is evaporated will +become lead again," and he hotly affirmed the opinion that "oil became a +fetter to genius and a dungeon to art." This being so, he evolved a method +of painting in water-colours, stiffened with white of egg or dilute glue, +on a ground prepared with whiting or plaster and laid on copper or board. + +When the "fresco" was finished he varnished it with a preparation of glue. +In his old age Linnell lent him a copy of Cennino Cennini's "Trattato +della pittura," and he was delighted to find that the method he had always +employed in his tempera pictures was very like that of the old +sixteenth-century painter. + +Occasionally his pictures acquired the mellow harmony, the indescribable +deep, yet faded tenderness of the old masters' tempera pictures, as for +instance that entitled "Bathsheba at the Bath seen by David." There is +nothing supernatural or weird here, save the flowers which grow around the +pool, and they are like the strange mysterious blooms that appear to one +in dreams. Bathsheba, nude and beautiful, with her two childish +attendants, one on either side, somehow recalls the work of Masaccio and +Filippino Lippi in the Chapel of the Carmine at Florence, perhaps because +it is so nobly naturalistic in treatment. + +Another beautiful tempera is "The Flight into Egypt." It was painted in +1790--the year of the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." Holman Hunt developed +in his magnificent picture of the same subject a poetic motive first used +by Blake. The great may take from the great without shame. The angelic +spirits of the martyred Innocents flutter around the Mother and Child, +while the ass on which they ride is followed by angels with great gloomy +wings, like night made visible and beneficent. The Virgin's little +delicate face looks wistfully from the dim picture like one of Gentile da +Fabbriano's small jewel-clear miniatures, and a crescent moon shines +vaguely silver through the darkness. This is a picture of high and tender +imaginative quality, more in the spirit of old masters like Fra Angelico, +it must be admitted, than characteristically Blakean in expression. + +There are three other methods used by Blake, of which one--the printed or +engraved outline, filled in with hand-wrought water-colour--is so familiar +to us from the examples studied at the British Museum, that we need not +linger to describe it again. At the British Museum we have also seen many +of Blake's "colour-printed" designs, but not any nearly as fine as the two +pictures entitled "Hecate" and "Lamech and his two Wives" of the +exhibition. The process, according to the younger Tatham's account, was as +follows: "Blake when he wanted to make his prints in oil, took a common +thick millboard and drew, in some strong ink or colour, his designs upon +it strong and thick. He then painted upon that in such oil colours and on +such a state of fusion that they would blur well. He painted roughly and +quickly, so that no colour would have time to dry. He then took a print of +that on paper, and this impression he coloured up in water-colours, +repainting his outline on the millboard when he wanted to take another +impression; and each having a sort of accidental look, he could branch out +so as to make each one different. The accidental look they had was very +enticing." + +The depth and grandeur of tone obtained in "Hecate" are unique, and, +united to the sombre majesty of the composition, form a most satisfying +work to eye and intellect. Looking closely at the technique, the colour is +seen to be collected in little pin-head dots all over the ground, in a +manner that clearly points to its having been impressed while yet wet, +with some carefully roughened surface, but just what means were used to +obtain this effect must always remain a mystery. + + +[Illustration: THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT + +Tempera painting. Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. W. Graham +Robertson] + + +The finest example of the process is, however, "Lamech and his two Wives," +in which the tragic nature of the subject is deepened by the +colour-printing, here most successfully handled. + +Pure water-colour, sometimes delicately outlined with the pen, was Blake's +fourth mode of working, and the exhibition had a goodly array of this +class of work. We have mentioned "The River of Life," perhaps the most +beautiful example extant, but several others, noticeably "Oberon, Titania, +and Puck with fairies dancing" and "The Wise and Foolish Virgins," were +very lovely. The first represents Blake in a rare mood, his mysticism in +abeyance, and his temper one of aesthetic abandon. We are so little +accustomed to think of him as an artist of varied and wide appeal, that +this rhythmic dance, which acted on the spectator like music, surprised. +It has in it the delirious joy of elemental things. The fairies' delicate +muslins are fetched out like mist in the greenwood; butterflies' wings and +petals of flower adorn their dainty heads. Puck has wings on the back of +his hands (a new and delightful idea this!), and the rapid graceful +movements of the dance do not seem to be arrested by their embodiment in a +painting. Though this phase of Blake is distinctly novel, even strange to +us, it is entirely delightful. There is no stress, no repelling yet +attractive mystery as in the "Hecate" here. It is just pure "joie de +vivre." + +"The Wise and Foolish Virgins" is much more characteristic of him. The +wise virgins in the foreground are ranged in a row, their lamps by their +sides. Their bodies and faces are smitten with a cold unearthly white +light, presumably, but not obviously, thrown by the lamps. The modelling +of their forms is most careful. Behind them, issuing from a small hut, +the foolish virgins, in wild confusion, implore oil for their lamps. The +landscape in which the scene is laid is anything but Eastern. Dark, +intensely green downs undulate and swell to meet the sky. A lurid light +defines the horizon, and in the swathed masses of gray cloud above, an +angel blowing a trump (suggesting a Last Judgement) wings his fateful way. +It may easily be urged (and the prosaic mind which only rejoices in the +precise and neat imitation of what it can _see_ is sure to exclaim) that +here is a defiance of all artistic rules, a pitiable inability to copy the +most ordinary natural phenomena, proclaiming Blake a wilful "poseur" or an +unobservant madman. "Here," they exclaim, "is little atmosphere, no +distance, no attempt at truth of tone, and no comprehensible rendering of +the light." + +Blake rendered it as he did because he _chose_; because his masterly sense +of style (that is, the treatment best suited to the representation of the +idea, his subjective vision) required it to be so painted and thus only, +because he considered himself free to take from Nature just what he needed +for his purpose, and never felt himself obliged to make an entire and +wholly truthful representation of her. To emphasize the light on the +figures of the foreground, he overcharged the colour in the sky and the +downs behind, and by this treatment obtained an effect productive of +strange and solemn emotion in the beholder. + +Nature was to him shadow or reminiscence only, and here he has defiantly +subordinated the truth of the landscape to the spiritual truth of his +subject. + + +[Illustration: OBERON, TITANIA AND PUCK WITH FAIRIES DANCING + +Water-colour. Undated. Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. A. A. de Pass] + + +The most significant types were revealed in his soul, and owned a +relationship to the visible creation only in so far as this relationship +was necessary to render his art-work intelligible to the world. His +decorative sense approved of the white virgins set so statue-pale +against the dark green of the downs. The suddenness of the contrast, +the livid and supernatural effect, were part of his deliberate intention. +So does the white fire of an intense spiritual alertness contrast with the +opaque darkness of natural physical life. For this scene, taken from the +parable of Jesus, is only another of those types which Blake regarded in +so wide and catholic a sense, and which by his treatment he has lifted +above all merely historical association into a realm of pure spiritual +symbolism. + +The pleasure derived from the examination of his collected pictures is +rather that of a profound intellectual excitement than a purely aesthetic +satisfaction. The climax of this excitement is reached before the two +pictures called, respectively, "Elohim creating Adam" and "Satan +triumphing over Eve." How different is Blake's conception of the former +subject to Michael Angelo's, and yet, widely different as they are, +somehow we know them to be related. Elohim, in the vortex of the winds, +lifts a face pale with awe and power, as he calls into being from the clay +below him a figure scarcely human yet, and stamped with the stamp of +terrestrial creeping mortality. A snake binds one leg, and there is no +other suggestion of life about this half-developed repelling organism. But +presently Elohim will breathe into the clay, and then this thing (which +somehow recalls Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" to my shuddering fancy!) +will arise and live. + +Michael Angelo chose the right moment, the body made beautiful but +languid, and God's finger applied like a magnet to the limp hand through +which the fiery currents of life are just beginning to flow in thrilling +gushes into the perfect body. But Blake, with a more curious care for the +earlier part of the process of creation, a more meditative and less +dramatic sense, invites us to dwell on, not the final perfect beauty of +created man, but his partial evolution from the dark earth to which he +will one day return. The accidental character of the body of man, the +universal nature of the Spirit of God, without whose inspiration there is +no beauty nor comeliness--these are thoughts on which he mused while +painting this great and terrible picture. + +The death-weary figure of Eve in the companion picture was a haunting +thing. Overcome by the serpent's wiles, Eve lies prostrate in the +tightening coils, and the cruel flat head is pressed upon the white +breast, whose power to resist is quite gone. The struggle is over, the +delicate body is relaxed, the little head has fallen back piteously, and +the eyes are closed, for no blue heavens smile comfort down on her who +lies so low in the dust. Satan in clouds of terror triumphs above her, and +her overthrow is complete. + +A little sketch in pencil, ink and wash, called "Satan, Sin and Death," +has a human figure (strangely enough that of Satan), finely posed, and +drawn with infinite power. The vigorous torso, slender hips, fine and +muscular legs, are classic in their heroic proportions, but it must be +admitted that the inspiration of the sketch as a whole is below Blake's +level. + +I must notice a very fine and highly-finished water-colour, called "The +Judgment of Paris." The subject was a congenial one to Blake, who +entertained the most original notions about classic legend and literature. +He wrote in the Descriptive Catalogue: + +"The Artist (Blake) having been taken in vision into the ancient +republics, monarchies, and patriachates of Asia, has seen those wonderful +originals called in the sacred scriptures the Cherubim, which were +sculptured and painted on walls of temples, towers, cities, palaces, and +erected in the highly-cultivated States of Egypt, Moab, Eden, Arum among +the rivers of Paradise--being the originals from which the Greeks and +Hetruvians copied Hercules Farnese, Venus of Medicis, Apollo Belvedere, +and all the grand works of ancient art.... + +"No man can believe that either Homer's Mythology or Ovid's was the +production of Greece or Latium; neither will anyone believe that the Greek +statues, as they are called, were the invention of Greek artists; perhaps +the Torso is the only original work remaining, all the rest being +evidently copies, though fine ones, from the greater works of the Asiatic +patriarchs. The Greek muses are daughters of Mnemosyne or Memory, and not +of Inspiration or Imagination, therefore not authors of such sublime +conceptions." + +In this ingenious way did Blake seek to justify his admiration for the old +pagan art, the old pagan mythology. They were recollections of symbols and +ideas given by God to the ancient patriarchs of the Old Testament, and +from them had filtered through to the civilization of Greece and Rome. To +Blake it all amounted to this, "God hath not left Himself without +witnesses," and he vehemently protested against any race, age, or religion +arrogating to itself the authorship of ideas which should only be ascribed +to God. + +So that the "Judgment of Paris" is treated like the biblical subjects, as +a spiritual parable. When the apple of desire is given to mere sensual +beauty instead of to moral or intellectual beauty, Love, the winged +spirit, flies away, and Discord, the malformed demon, arrives. The three +goddesses' forms, delicate as reeds, pure as Blake's austere imagination, +and modelled with tender care for their lovely limbs, hands and faces, +awaken in us a great wonder at the technique he could command when he +chose. One of the tenderest and most beautiful of Blake's slightly tinted +drawings, "The Vision of Queen Katherine"--we are enabled to reproduce +through the kindness of its present owner, Sir Charles Dilke. The +composition is of exceeding harmony, the delicate outlines being suave, +fluent, gracious, to a singular degree. Sweetness and tenderness are its +predominant characteristics, and it is without a rival among Blake's works +in this respect, saving perhaps for the picture, "And when they had sung +an hymn they ascended unto the Mount of Olives." + +Katherine, sick unto death, has been soothed to sleep by music: + + Cause the musicians play me that sad note + I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating + On that celestial harmony I go to, + +she had asked. Griffith and Patience sit beside her, unconscious of the +vision that is blessing her sleep. Katherine, beautiful and crowned, +"makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her hands to +heaven." Angels of diminutive but exquisite forms float in circles above +her, and two are holding a crown of laurels over her head. Many +pictures--the Indian ink drawing called "The Deluge," an infinite waste of +stormy sea; "The Entombment," a picture of solemn intensity and +originality; and others deserve description and comment, but space does +not allow. + +The exhibition was an occasion of much illumination to Blake's admirers, +and the thoughts on his art which it gave rise to may be happily +summarized in a passage from Heine's "Salon": + +"Art attains its highest value when the symbol, apart from its inner +meaning, delights our senses externally, like the flowers of a _selam_, +which without regard to their secret signification are blooming and +lovely, bound in a bouquet." + + +[Illustration: THE VISION OF QUEEN KATHERINE, FROM SHAKSPERE'S "HENRY +VIII." + +Slightly tinted pencil drawing, executed in 1807 for Mr. Butts. Reproduced +by kind permission of Sir Charles Dilke] + + +"But is such concord always possible? Is the artist so completely free in +choosing and binding his mysterious flowers? Or does he only choose and +bind together what he must? I affirm this question of mystical +un-freedom or want of will. The artist is like that somnambula princess +who plucked by night in the garden of Bagdad, inspired by the deep wisdom +of love, the strangest flowers, and bound them into a _selam_, of whose +meaning she remembered nothing when she awoke. There she sat in the +morning in her harem, and looked at the _bouquet de nuit_, musing on it as +over a forgotten dream, and finally sent it to the beloved Caliph. The fat +eunuch who brought it greatly enjoyed the beautiful flowers without +suspecting their meaning. But Haroun al Raschid, the commander of the +faithful, the follower of the Prophet, the possessor of the ring of +Solomon, he recognized the deep meaning of the beautiful bouquet; his +heart bounded with delight; he kissed every blossom, and laughed till +tears ran down his long beard." We may not be followers of the Prophet, +nor rejoice in long beards or magic rings, yet I dare assert that in +entering into the meaning, the deep "_Innigkeit_" of the _selam_ which +Blake presented to us, we have entered on a new phase of spiritual and +artistic life not less intensely delightful than the joy experienced by +the Prophet. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +ENGRAVINGS AND DRAWINGS IN THE PRINT ROOM + + +I am afraid that the first view of Blake's engraving of "The Canterbury +Pilgrimage" will prejudice the spectator unfavourably towards our artist, +even if the work by him already seen has made its fascination felt. + +Especially will this prejudice be heightened if the engraving from +Stothard's picture of the same subject be set against Blake's and compared +with it, for Blake's astonishes and repels on first sight, while +Stothard's pleases at once. + +In Stothard's composition the variety of the company, and especially of +the horses they ride, is charming. Very different are the grim ranks of +Blake's procession, the ten horses therein exhibiting only three positions +among them, and those positions being all traditionally faithful to the +hobby-horse type. Stothard's motley throng are gracefully habited, and +appear dainty and spruce in spite of the dust of the highway as they amble +along. His lighting of the picture, the firm and effective modelling of +the horses and their riders, the wide range of tones amounting almost to +colour itself, give a satisfying richness which we fail to find in Blake's +picture. + +The whole composition is harmonious, and for those who desire nothing +further of art than that it shall cater for the eye without much or +intimate reference to the mind, then Stothard's graceful performance is +indeed pre-eminent. + +Turning to Blake's picture, we find he has catered for the mind, but, +having done that, he has denied us the one thing of which Stothard is so +prodigal--beauty. In his restless search beneath the surface with which +beauty obviously is concerned, for the things of the spirit and the +intelligence underlying the appearance, Blake has here lost sight of art's +first principle, beauty in the whole, as the result of the parts. The +composition in its entirety is not beautiful. It has no harmony. It is an +accretion of separate parts, made out without reference to the picture's +final unity. These parts, although some are beautiful in themselves, are +not intimately related to each other, and contribute so little towards a +general predominant scheme that the effect of discord is produced, and the +multitudinous meanings and intentions with which each figure is fraught +over-weight the composition and confuse the beholder; the simple reason of +all this being, that the first obligation of the painter, his sense of +harmony and balance, has been ruthlessly violated. Perhaps Blake's sense +of style--about which I imagine he never reasoned, it being innate and +intuitive--deserted him on this one occasion, because anger was making +havoc in his heart and blinding his eyes. The conditions under which he +worked, it will be remembered, must have been destructive to all +concentration and artistic isolation of mood. Still, as I have said, +though sadly wanting as a whole, there is beauty of an intricate and +curious sort in the details. + +Look on the wide expanse of swelling downs over-arched by the tragic +splendour of an evening sky. Here the thought, as ever with Blake, is +lifted up above the accidents, into the eternal and the infinite. But +Stothard's gentle hills and bowery trees shut out such vistas, and he +concerns himself scarcely at all about the sky, which is merely the +background on which to throw up the graceful heads of his graceful +unintelligent folk. + +The characteristic group of children with their mother and grandfather, +which Blake has set beside the gateway of the Tabard Inn, has great beauty +as a single motive. No labour has been spared to make all faithful to the +Chaucerian conception: the curious semi-Gothic gateway, the crowding +pigeons, the barbaric splendours of the wife of Bath, the mediaeval figure +of the knight, whose face reminds one somewhat of the supposed portrait of +Cimabue in the Chapel of the Spaniards in Santa Maria Novella; all have +been wrought with painful care. The work is an illustration of Blake's +principle enunciated in his notes on Reynolds' "Discourses" and elsewhere +that "Real effect is making out of parts, and it is nothing else but +that." + +Perhaps the strangest trait the engraving exhibits in comparison with +Stothard's is that it looks so antique. It might have been executed a +hundred years earlier than the other picture, so wilfully grotesque and +archaic is it. Yes, _wilfully_ is the word, for Blake _wished_ to make his +procession as stiff and quaint and rich as the stately Chaucerian language +that first painted the scene, forgetting perhaps that the two arts of +poetry and painting achieve the same end through widely different +conditions, and according to processes contiguous, but +non-interchangeable. The want of ease, of careless and familiar naturalism +in the engraving, may recall to those who look for it the splendid and +ceremonious language of the old story-teller. The description written by +Blake of his own design (it will be found in Gilchrist) shows how he loved +and understood Chaucer, and, we may add, how very loosely the poem was +grasped, and with what want of truth to the original it was represented by +his rival. Lamb said of the engraving itself that it was "a work of +wonderful power and spirit, hard and dry, yet with grace," and the +Descriptive Catalogue--a copy of which was given him by Crabb +Robinson--pleased him greatly; the part devoted to an analysis of the +characters in the "Canterbury Pilgrimage" he found to be "the finest +criticism of Chaucer's poem he had ever read." + +Savagely powerful as it is, the engraving is merely an interesting and not +a vital utterance of Blake. The tempera picture from which it was engraved +was bought by Mr. Butts, but has been lost sight of now for many years. +Stothard's oil painting of the same subject is in the National Gallery. + +Turning to the other original single engravings of Blake in the Print +Room, we find several of interest. There is that early one, designed and +engraved in 1780, which has been called "Glad Day," and is the expression +of a mood oftener felt in Blake's early manhood than in the ensuing years +of chafing complexity and multitudinous emotions. I have wondered whether +it be not the pictorial embodiment of the vision which he saw of the +"Spiritual Sun on Primrose Hill," described by him to Crabb Robinson. + +Among the original engravings here may be seen the broadsheet of "Little +Tom the Sailor," executed by Blake for Hayley while at Felpham in 1800, +for a charitable purpose. + +Hayley's verses and Blake's designs were bitten in with stopping-out +varnish on the pewter plate of the original from which the prints are +taken. + +In the designs setting out the misfortunes of a poor widow and the heroism +of her little son he has given us one theme of natural scenery--a winding +path, a little wood surmounted by bare folded downs--testifying to the +invasion which the obvious beauty of Felpham had made on his artistic +consciousness; while the other illustration represents the tragic moment +when little Tom on the wreck is about to be drowned; over the trough of +deep sea the spiritual form of his father appears ready to receive and +embrace his soul. Mrs. Blake's hand unfortunately has coloured the Print +Room copy. + +And now let us turn to the pen-and-ink etchings to Dante, designed and +executed for Mr. Linnell between the years 1824 and 1827, the year of +Blake's death. + +There are seven of them, wrought by the pen, which had become so +deliberate, careful and delicate in execution during these last years of +his life. + +Let us linger over two of them for a moment. + +Among the many pictures of Paolo and Francesca that exist, was there ever +seen anything like this of Blake's imagining? + +You may prefer others--Ary Scheffer's, Dante Rossetti's, or Mr. G. F. +Watts'--you may object that this one has not grappled with the passionate +love-motive of the story, that it has omitted the note of yearning, of +beloved pain, with which Dante's conception is fraught. The austerity of a +mind which theorized much on the subject of love--the love of man and +woman--but knew actually very little of its vehemence, its trouble, and +its languorous sweetness, forbade Blake to focus in the figures of Paolo +and Francesca the ideal tragedy of those "whom love bereav'd of life." + +The scene as a whole--that second circle of the Inferno, in which + + The stormy blast of hell + With restless fury drives the spirits on, + Whirl'd round and dashed amain + With sore annoy-- + +was what arrested his imagination. Here, in his rendering of the subject, +the blast has torn upward in a visible ribbon-like vortex from the surface +of the waters, bearing within it, as images in a crystal, the +innumerable figures of the world's great lovers. From a spit of land, +Paolo and Francesca, fluttering "light before the wind," appear in a +single tongue of flame, and Dante lies stretched upon the ground--"through +compassion fainting." Virgil is seen irradiated by the effulgent light +which trembles around the disc wherein the immortal kiss--that which +Rostand calls "_l'instant d'infini_"--is poetically represented. + + +[Illustration: THE CIRCLE OF THE LUSTFUL + +Fine Indian ink pen drawing, in the Print Room, 1825-6. Francesca da +Rimini, Canto V. of the "Inferno"] + + +As usual, the force, the unusualness of the conception, rather than its +ideal beauty are the points we notice first. But closer study attests to +its beauty too. Mere literary interest would give the picture no real +claim to artistic regard. But Blake felt the drawing of each bounding line +as a thing of beauty in itself, having an aesthetic element of its own, +apart from its representative or symbolic use. In that coil of entangled +fates, what manifold themes of pure sensuous beauty are to be found! For +instance--just at the leap and bend of the circle--appears a woman with +arms extended in the fluent wind, like a bird in flight, and a man's +embrace encircles her neck--a man whose face she kisses rapturously. +Leaping, floating, falling, the multitudinous figures are borne onward by +the resistless force of that terrible blast; and, however foreign or +antipathetic this embodiment of Dante's vision may seem to us, we are +bound to admit that its imaginative scope is of a temper characteristic +not only of Blake, but of the Florentine himself. An aspect of Dante's +conception is developed and emphasized here in a manner which has not been +attempted in any other picture of the subject. + +The other pen-and-ink drawing from the "Inferno" represents Dante and +Virgil in the Circle of the Traitors, with the head of Bocca degli Abati +breaking through the lake of ice at the foot of Dante. Blake has given +strangely passionless faces to his Dante and Virgil, but the pure simple +lines of their figures are severely congruous with the scene, and the +iceberg, formed of shadowy frozen figures to the right, is powerfully +suggested by a few lines of sufficient economy. The picture is another of +those unique embodiments from which, once seen and dwelt on, the modern +imagination can never release itself. Gustave Doré's sensational rendering +of the same scene seems to me to acknowledge an inspiration at this +source. + +The other five designs to Dante merit a description and attention which +space does not allow us to give them here. They are of great power, but +whether the unflinching realization of the terrible imaginings of Dante is +permissible in pictorial art--where the visual representation attacks the +emotions and intellect with a poignancy that words, however forcible, can +never attain--is a question the discussion of which may provide food for +argument to critics of the school of Lessing. For my own part, I incline +to the opinion that they overstep the bounds of terror authorized in art, +and approach the confines of the horrible in the treatment of the main +motive of each design--"Admirably horrid," Mr. W. M. Rossetti pronounces +them. The unwavering truth to Dante's detailed descriptions is beyond +question, however. + +The inmost sanctuary of an artist's mind is far more accessible through +his pencil sketches than through his final consummated pictures and +designs. There is something so intimate, so personal in these +manifestations of himself, that in regarding them I have something of the +feeling of one who listens unseen to a man thinking aloud. Nothing +convinces one of the labour, the thought, the balancing, the rejections, +the careful choice, that go to make up a picture like the study of the +sketches made for it. + +The peculiarity of Blake's pencil sketches is their vehemence, and the +absence in them of all hesitation. He seems from the first moment of +conception to know exactly what he means to do, and rough, almost +hieroglyphic, as the first shadow of his idea may appear at first sight, +we have only to compare it with the design or picture which eventually +resulted from it, to see that all the rapid "short-hand" lines of the +sketch, block out accurately the disposition of the main parts of the +design, the final attitude of the figures therein, without as a rule any +real variation from the first idea having taken place in the working out. + +This testifies more than anything else to the distinctness of the vision +seen by Blake, and his eager passionate discernment of it. Among such +sketches of clearly apprehended vision is that for "The Soul exploring the +recesses of the Grave," the final design of which we are already very +familiar with. It is executed with a broad-ended chalk pencil, in quick +unhesitating lines. There is not a single touch that cannot be traced, +that is not an essential development, in the finished picture, so that we +know Blake saw it all from the first, complete then in his mind's eye as +on the day when he finished the detailed drawing for the engraver. + +Another sketch of the same order is one which, although it does not belong +to any public collection, is so important as to excuse a reference to it +here. Through the great kindness of Mr. Frederick Shields, to whom it +belongs, I am enabled to reproduce it. The two motives of the picture in +Blair's "Grave," called "Death's Door," had been favourite ones with +Blake, and used by him separately in "The Gates of Paradise," "The +Marriage of Heaven and Hell," and "America," before he combined them so +felicitously in the noble design which ranks among his best works. The +sketch by Blake belonging to Mr. Shields would seem to represent the +moment when he first realized the power and significance and beauty to be +obtained by their incorporation in one design. Of this conception it must +be admitted that it grew in Blake's mind after the first flashing vision +of it, and was not from the beginning discernible in all the splendour to +which it was eventually developed. + +Here is another beautiful and careful sketch of a female figure diving +through the air. The force of her perpendicular flight, the attitude of +one leg (the left, not the right, however) recall the "Reunion of the Soul +and the Body," but this figure is undraped, and the arms are extended +downwards, and indeed the differences are so numerous that it cannot be +regarded as a sketch for that picture. In all probability it is a +preliminary study for one of the numerous figures in the "Last Judgment" +which he executed for the Countess of Egremont in 1807. + +Looking at the terse expressive little drawing, we are reminded of Blake's +"golden rule of art"--"that the more distinct, sharp, and wiry the +boundary line, the more perfect the work of art." Ah! but how he played +with his line! "Wiry" at least it never was, say what Blake would! He +never "painted" it, but felt his way along with sympathetic accuracy. And +with what infinite inflexions of tenderness and strength did his pencil +impress itself on the paper, indicating by that rare quality of touch more +than form and modelling--almost, one had said--the very nature of the +flesh of the figures he drew. + +Speaking of Blake's drawings, the manner in which he drew the muscular +form of the male leg is very noticeable and strangely characteristic of +him. Another line he felt very tenderly was the curved sweep of a woman's +back from shoulder to indented waist, and downwards to delicate ankles and +heels. + + +[Illustration: UNDATED PENCIL SKETCH FOR "DEATH'S DOOR" + +Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Frederic J. Shields] + + +Let us linger a minute over another of what I may call Blake's shorthand +sketches in the Print Room collection. It is undoubtedly the first idea +for the picture entitled "The Spiritual form of Nelson guiding Leviathan, +in whose wreathings are enfolded the nations of the earth." The finished +picture appeared in Blake's own exhibition in 1809; it is now in the +possession of T. W. Jackson, Esq., of Worcester College, Oxford. + +In the sketch, "Nelson" is drawn symbolically as a young sea-god, nude and +commanding. He stands firmly on a coil of Leviathan's body, which rearing +and circling surrounds him like a frame. We can just distinguish the human +forms caught in the serpent's toils, and its great mouth is in the act of +devouring a man. The mouth is bridled, and the reins held by Nelson's +hand. The symbolism is easy enough to understand and requires no +explanation. + +A carefully shaded and conscientious drawing of a naked man with arms +upraised testifies to the fact that Blake _did_ work from the model +sometimes. But how cold such work appears--valuable and necessary as it +is--compared with the passionate half-defined sketches, the mood of which +transfers to us something of the high pleasure that Blake himself felt in +making these burning transcripts from his imagination or visions. + +I had much ado to make out the subject of the pen-and-wash sketch of a +woman and man with a group of people on their knees in a cornfield. In the +distance a thunder-cloud emits a lightning flash. Mr. Shields tells me +that he and Dante Gabriel Rossetti spent an evening trying to decipher a +larger and more definite sketch of the same idea, and finally decided that +it was an illustration of the following verses (1 Sam. xii. 16-19): "Now +therefore stand and see this great thing which the Lord will do before +your eyes. Is it not wheat harvest to-day? I will call unto the Lord and +he shall send thunder and rain; that ye may perceive and see that your +wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the Lord, in +asking you a king. So Samuel called unto the Lord, and the Lord sent +thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the Lord and +Samuel." + +Among the many other sketches which space does not permit me to comment +on, are two very beautiful studies in red chalk, showing Blake to be a +master of line indeed. Of his engravings after designs by Stothard, +Romney, Flaxman, Hogarth, examples of which the Print Room possesses, it +is not necessary to speak, for this book is not concerned with engraving +or any other technical branch of art. Its purpose is merely to examine +into, and if possible lay bare, the nature of the artistic impulse that +makes the work of Blake--as we may all know it in our public +collections--so rare and so precious a thing. But though we shall not +concern ourselves with these engravings, as they contribute nothing to our +purpose, it is interesting to look at the numerous copies which our artist +made from prints of Michael Angelo's frescoes on the roof of the Sistine, +from drawings after the antique, and from Cumberland's "Designs for +Engravings." These latter are pen drawings of Greek figures--similar to +those represented on old black and yellow vases--and display the Greek +ideal of form, so beautiful yet so passionless and un-individual, when +compared with the figures of the great Florentine, in which the soul with +all its struggles is apparent. Copying such diverse work +faithfully--"for," wrote Blake, "servile copying is the great merit of +copying"--must have made him think, compare, choose. Goethe says that his +study of the ancient classic literature convinced him "that a vast +abundance of objects must lie before us ere we can think upon them,--that +we must accomplish something, nay, fail in something, before we can +learn our own capacities and those of others." And this was much more the +case with Blake and his art than might be supposed. It was not ignorance +of other ideals, of other methods of thought and work, that caused him to +take the artistic path he did; it was definite choice, the ratification of +his innate, strongly individualistic tendencies, resulting from comparing +them with the characteristic principles of art exhibited in other ages, +other masters. Blake in fact copied a good deal; he himself writes in his +notes on Reynolds, "the difference between a bad artist and a good one is: +the bad artist seems to copy a great deal, the good one really does copy a +great deal." + + +[Illustration: HEAD OF AN OLD MAN + +Pencil, pen, and wash drawing. Undated] + + +Turning to his water-colour sketches in the Print Room, I consider the +finest to be a very portrait-like head of an old man. It was evidently put +in in pencil and pale washes of colour, and afterwards strengthened, +rather daringly, with pen-and-ink outlines. The face with its deep eyes +and noble contours is that of a seer, awestruck before his vision. It is +in such work as this--swift, strong and delicate--that we see Blake at his +best. In finished work--such little as he has left us--some heat, some +fire seems to have escaped, but in sketches such as this the inspiration +is contained in all its strongly-spiced vitality; that which is left +undone, assisting that which is done, in producing an impression of energy +and imaginative development. A pale-tinted, very careful and elaborate +drawing of the Whore of Babylon, as Blake imagined her, next claims our +attention. It was etched and reproduced by William Bell Scott. Never did +Blake represent so voluptuous, so sensual a face, as this of the Whore of +Babylon, which in spite of its beauty is of the same type as that of the +Wife of Bath in his "Canterbury Pilgrimage." In its expression it has no +fellow, save perhaps the face of Leda in Michael Angelo's small statuette +in the Bargello. The woman is seated on a seven-headed semi-human +monster, and she holds in her hand a cup out of which smoke issues and +condenses in the forms of floating men and women of incomparable grace. +These swim around her head in a long ribbon-like streamer, and as the +little figures reach the ground they are devoured by the seven heads. They +symbolize the pleasures, ambitions, lusts of this world. + +Another beautiful water-colour, in faint and tender colour, is perhaps the +very vignette for Blair's "Grave," which Blake sent to Cromek with his +verses of dedication to the Queen, and which was returned on his hands +with such a cruel and insulting letter. Part of this design has been +etched and reproduced by William Bell Scott. A mother and her young +family, from whose ankles the chains of mortality have just been severed, +ascend upward with looks of solemn exaltation on their rapt faces. They +form a noble group. Above, on the left, is an angel with a sword and key +who has presumably just set them free; he is Death, I suppose--a young and +beautiful Death; while to the right is another Apollo-like being, who +holds a pair of scales and represents St. Michael. In the most ancient +Italian pictures the Archangel is often pictured as weighing the souls of +the newly dead. + +A large and very important water-colour drawing is called the "Lazar +House," from Milton. It is one of Blake's terrible works, and has a +tendency to haunt the memory unpleasantly. It is very powerful. + + +[Illustration: THE WHORE OF BABYLON + +Water colour drawing, 1809] + + +A great blind, bearded figure, with outstretched arms--Death in another +aspect--is suspended in air over a scene of painfulness and intense +horror, such as few artists would dare to represent. The victims of plague +are writhing in death-agonies on the floor, while a figure to the right, +with sinister face and nervous hand clutching a bolt (or is it a knife?), +fills the spectator with insane shudderings and alarm. He eyes the +sufferers with gloating satisfaction, and the fact that he is coloured +green as verdigris from head to foot does not detract from his horrible +fascinations. I can never get over the feeling that pictures such as these +caused Blake profound pain, that indeed he sought relief from their +dominion over his mental life by turning the vision that haunted him into +a definite artistic image, thus by the act of projection getting rid of +the disquieting, the torturing inward tyrant. For with him, as I have +striven to show, all thought came with the definiteness of vision; so that +he could not read Milton's or Dante's descriptions without seeing the +thing described, immediately start into visible being before him. + +A finished and elaborate water-colour of a female recumbent figure on a +tomb, with a foreground starred with brilliant flowers, is called "Letho +Similis," but in no respect is it like Blake's work, and there seems no +reason whatever to consider it as having been done by his hand, except +that it has passed as his for a long time. So acute a critic as Mr. W. M. +Rossetti casts doubt on the authorship of the work in his descriptive +catalogue. + +On the whole I think the review of Blake's pencil sketches and drawings +impress one as powerfully as any of the work of his which we have +previously seen, and mainly for the reason that it is in these that we can +most clearly trace his thoughts in process of evolution. + +And now all that remains for us to do is to visit the National Gallery, +and there in the little octagonal room behind the Turner Gallery seek out +those few precious works which are the representatives of his genius to +the public at large. Whether that public often penetrates here, or, being +here, lingers even momently before the few strange little pictures by +Blake which it contains, may be questioned. + +That they are not popular, and that the little room is never crowded, +needs no demonstration. Blake's greatness is not of the kind that can ever +compete successfully with the claims of such masters as his +contemporaries--Stothard, Romney, Gainsborough and Reynolds--whose +brilliant and alluring work adorns the galleries through which one must +pass to reach the little octagonal room where his few pictures, modestly +retired behind the door, await such as will patiently seek them out. + +First let us look at the water-colour numbered 43, entitled "David +delivered out of Deep Waters." It has qualities of handling akin to the +"River of Life," belonging to Captain Butts, and the conception is +specially Blakean. David, with his arms bound round with cords, floats +symbolically on dark waters. Above, seven cherubim, with wings interlacing +like the shields of a phalanx, swoop down in rhythmic ranks, with Christ +in their centre. The remarkable thing about these cherubim is that two +have the faces of children, two those of old white-bearded men, two those +of mature manhood, while the centre one alone, immediately below Christ, +has the face of a beautiful youth. + +The figure and attitude of the Saviour have a noble grace, but the face is +weak and ineffectual, as is usual with Blake when treating the divine +lineaments. + +The effect of the picture--with those strong, ordered wings in ranks, +recalling the banners borne in some rich church procession--is one of +curious symmetry, of almost heraldic composition. A delicate and remote +strangeness of imagination makes itself felt in every line, every tint; +and the range of tone is noticeably peculiar, the deepest and highest +parts of the scale being used with great effect, while no recourse has +been had to the intermediate gamut, so that there is no full body of +colour present at all. The nearest approach to it is the quivering pale +golden light that is diffused around the figure of Christ. + + +[Illustration: DAVID, DELIVERED OUT OF MANY WATERS + +Water-colour. In National Gallery, undated] + + +No. 1164, "The Procession from Calvary," is a tempera picture reminiscent +in quality of colour of the _quattrocento_ Italian masters. Stiff, +composed and straight is the body of Jesus laid on the bier. Three pairs +of bearers support the holy burden on their shoulders. The Virgin alone, +and two other women side by side, follow the _cortége_, while in the +distance Calvary, with its three crosses, may be seen; and Jerusalem is +represented by a group of buildings defiantly Gothic in character. The +bearers and the women moving across the foreground so majestically, so +quietly, might be the somewhat stiff rendering of an idea, inspired by the +procession in a basrelief on some old Greek or Roman sarcophagus, such as +Mantegna or Andrea del Castagno worked out on canvas. + +Then there is a highly-finished water-colour of an allegory--numbered +44--to be studied. It is soon evident to the spectator that the elaborate +composition owns as central motive the Atonement, with all the symbolic +correspondences which in the scriptures predicted it. At the highest point +of the picture is a medallion wherein the Almighty is represented. Dull +flames flicker and smoke around, while on them is inscribed in very small +writing the significant words "God out of Christ is a consuming fire." +This, as we know, was a much-insisted-on doctrine of Blake's, for he seems +to have denied at times the responsible fatherhood of God; and never did +he share the respectable conception of Him, prevalent at that day even +more than in this, which Tennyson so aptly defined as "an immeasurable +clergyman." + +Below the medallion are little scenes displaying the Death of Abel, the +Flood, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Transfiguration, and, finally, the +symbolic Vision of the Holy Grail. All these separate but related motives +are woven together, with subsidiary scenes to right and left, into one +intricate and most beautiful scheme. + +The low tones of the composition, the dim, delicate tinting, bring the +varied and multitudinous parts into a harmony of effect that is very +delightful, while the spiritual and intellectual material with which it is +characteristically builded up, send our thoughts voyaging out like birds +over the sea of religious mysticism. + +I have left the most important picture to be dealt with last. The tempera +picture, numbered 1110, was painted as the companion to "Nelson and +Leviathan"--a sketch for which is in the British Museum, it will be +remembered--and was shown for the first time at Blake's own exhibition in +1809. In his Descriptive Catalogue the title ran as follows: "The +spiritual form of Pitt guiding Behemoth; he is that Angel, who, pleased to +perform the Almighty's orders, rides on the whirlwind directing the storms +of war; he is ordering the Reaper to reap the vine of the earth, and the +Ploughman to plough up the cities and towers." + +At first sight the figure of a beautiful young man is the one thing that +stands out clearly from the dim splendour and bewildering detail of the +picture. This noble form, instinct with power and authority, represents +the spiritual body of Pitt. A gleaming halo surrounds his head, and the +background is massed with seething indistinct figures. + +Here and there strange glancing lights and phosphorescent stars emit a +milky radiance, but it is some few minutes before the eye can distinguish +the head and back of Leviathan. On either side of the great halo appears a +man's form; one holds the crescent moon by way of sickle, the other +presses heavily upon a harrow. They are the Reaper, Death, and the +Ploughman Equality. All is steeped in gloomy twilight touched here and +there with subdued yet brilliant light, as of moonlight on water. Strange +little figures seem to gather form out of the brownish mist before one's +very eyes, and there is something of a miraculous charm on this +cosmos--the fruit of the travail of Blake's intellect. + + +[Illustration: THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF PITT GUIDING BEHEMOTH + +Tempera. 1809 or earlier. In the National Gallery] + + +Of serenity, of clarity, there is none; but Blake's virtue, his quality +with its necessary attendant defects, dominates this work and makes it +precious in the sense of a unique record of a unique conception. Therefore +it is fittingly placed as a representative of Blake's genius in our +National Palace of Art. + +What the place assigned to Blake by future generations will be is not for +me to predict. That he has been gravely misapprehended and foolishly +neglected until the last few years is common knowledge, but even to-day +the ranks of his true lovers are scattered and few, though there are some +people who affirm that an exaggerated distinction, an inflated value, +attaches to his name at present, as a result of the swing of time's +pendulum. Such people, however, are not among those who under any +circumstances would be likely to admire Blake or appreciate his unique +point of view. + +This little book has had for its object, not the imparting of any new +facts about him, nor the technical discussion of his works, but the +reverent and sympathetic meditation on our own National Blake treasures, +with a view to understanding the great spirit who projected them. I have +attempted to point out their essential beauties and value, not from the +vantage-ground of the connoisseur, but from the point of view of the +sympathetic observer. I have sought to explain, to justify, the affinity +felt for them by those to whom the doctrine of "Art for art's sake" is not +an all-satisfying thesis, who would fain find in plastic art a language +expressive of spiritual intuitions and revelation. Blake's mission +undoubtedly was to discover in his representations of visible phenomena +the spiritual cause, or correspondence, of which it appeared to him to be +merely a type. How far his ideas are consistent with the conditions and +scope of an art which must necessarily concern itself with surfaces and +appearances, it is hard to say. His view of art's function was largely, +but not wholly true, yet in its special application was profoundly noble +and salutary. Exaggerated, perhaps, in his recoil from the materialism and +preoccupation with physical and natural beauties as ends in themselves +which characterized the art of his day, he set to work to liberate one +hitherto unsuspected aspect of art's functions, at the expense of +belittling the recognized and practised articles of belief recited in her +honour by the masters of his time. + +The innerness of art; that is what he was concerned about. Impetuously, +passionately he stormed along the rugged track he had set himself to +explore, ignoring much of beauty and truth to either side of him, because +his eyes were so steadfastly fixed on his goal. To-day we acclaim him as +the heroic and devoted priest of a new and yet old altar to Art, the flame +of which has been kept burning since his time by Dante Gabriel Rossetti +and the Pre-Raphaelites, and Mr. G. F. Watts. + + + + +INDEX + + + Academy, Royal, Blake attends the schools of, 6, 50. + + Academy, Royal, Exhibits at, 8, 14, 43. + + Academy, Royal, A grant from, 50. + + _Accusers, The Three_, 121. + + _Ahania, The Book of_, 23, 120. + + _America_, 23; + described, 107; + a cancel-sheet for, 121. + + _Ancient of Days, The_, 56, 112. + + Apprenticeship to Basire, 5, 20. + + _Atonement, The_, 191. + + + _Ballads on Animals_, illustrations to Hayley's, 31, 137. + + _Bard, The_, 164. + + Basire, Blake apprenticed to, 5; + his influence, 150. + + _Bathsheba at the Bath_, 167. + + Blake, Robert, 4, 15, 133; + his death, 15. + + Blake, William, birth, 3; + family history, 4; + birthplace, 3; + his brothers and sister, 4; + marriage, 9; + suggested as tutor to the royal family, 22; + his last sketch, 56; + death, 56; + lived at Green Street, 11; + Broad Street, 14; + Poland Street, 15; + Lambeth, 21; + Felpham, 24; + South Molton Street, 29; + Temple, 50; + his hatred of oppression, 16; + visions of his brother, 17; + his kind-heartedness, 22; + trial for sedition, 29; + influence over younger men, 47, 52; + his circle of friends, 48, 52, 54; + his surroundings in later years, 50; + his appearance, 51, 54; + German eulogy, 54; + learns Italian, 54; + his poverty, 82; + his exhibition, 40; + criticisms on painting and poetry, 40; + his artistic affinities, 41; + his aim in art, 7; + his literary affinities, 37; + views on contemporary artists, 20, 46; + justifies his mode of representation, 165; + his inability to depict Christ, 145, 190; + his intuitive system of belief, 61; + his detachment from his age, 61; + his view of humanity, 65, 66. + + Bouchier, Catherine, married to Blake, 9; + her character, 10; + her death, 56; + her assistance in printing, 83. + + + Calvert, Edward, friendship with Blake, 52. + + _Canterbury Pilgrims, The_ (Blake's), designed, 37; + completed, 38; + exhibited, 40. + _See_ Stothard, Thomas. + + _Canterbury Pilgrims, The_ (Engraving), issued, 44; + discussed, 176. + + Coleridge, S. T., meeting with Blake, 47. + + Cowper, engravings for Hayley's Life of, 31. + + Cromek, R. H., his relations with Blake, 35-37, 39. + + + Dante, illustrations to the _Divina Commedia_ of, 54; + discussed, 180. + + _David delivered out of Deep Waters_, 190. + + _Death of Earl Godwin_, 8. + + _Death's Door_, development of the design of, 91, 96. + + _Descriptive Catalogue_ of Blake's exhibition, 40, 77, 82, 165, 172, + 178, 192. + + _Designs, The Large Book of_, 120. + + _Designs, The Small Book of_, 120. + + + Education, Blake's early, 4. + + Ellis and Yeats, Commentary on Blake, 1, 3, 16, 22, 30, 49, 57, 60, 71. + + _Elohim Creating Adam, The_, 171. + + _Europe_, 23; + described, 110. + + Exhibitions of Blake's works, (1809), 40; + (1904), 159. + + + Felpham, residence at, 24, 179; + early enjoyment of, 25; + subsequent unhappiness at, 27. + + Flaxman, J., introduction to, 8; + aid from, 12, 23; + correspondence with, 25. + + _Flight into Egypt, The_, 167. + + _French Revolution, The_, 17. + + Fresco, Blake's use of the term, 38. + + Fuseli, Blake's friendship with, 8, 17, 50; + his appreciation of Blake, 11, 38, 50. + + + _Gates of Paradise, The_, 23; + described, 93. + + _Ghost of Abel, The_, 17. + + _Ghost of a Flea_, 49. + + Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_, 1, 9, 32, 50, 51, 55. + + _Glad Day_, 179. + + Gothic influences, 5, 151. + + _Grave, The_, Blake's illustrations to Blair's: sold to Cromek, 35; + published, 39; + discussed, 140; + described, 143; + Blake's introductory verses, 141. + + + Hayley, Blake's introduction to, 23; + life at Felpham, 24-31; + illustrations to his _Ballads_, 31; + to his life of Cowper, 31; + letters to, 32. + + _Hecate_, 168. + + Humphrey, Ozias, Blake's relations with, 38. + + Hunt, Leigh, inept criticisms by, 42. + + + _Ideas of Good and Evil_, 30. + + Irish ancestry suggested for Blake, 3. + + + _Jerusalem_, 31, 34; + discussed, 123; + described, 127. + + _Job, The Book of_, drawings for, 54; + discussed, 148; + described, 151; + sold, 148. + + _Joseph of Arimathea_, 6. + + _Judgment of Paris, The_, 172. + + + Lamb, Charles, appreciative criticisms by, 99, 179. + + _Lamech and his Two Wives_, 168, 169. + + _Laocoon_, 50. + + _Last Judgment, The_, 38. + + _Lazar House, The_, 188. + + Le Brun, Blake's early aversion to her work, 6. + + _Lenore_, illustrations to Bürger's, 137. + + Linnell, John, Blake's friendship with, 47, 54, 150; + and the Book of Job, 149. + + _Little Tom the Sailor_, 179. + + _Los, The Book of_, 23; + described, 122. + + _Los, The Song of_, 23; + described, 121. + + + Madness, his alleged, 73. + + Malkin's _Memorials_ of his child, illustrated by Blake, 38. + + _Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The_, 17; + discussed, 90; + quoted, 101. + + Mathew, the Rev. Henry, an early friend, 11-14. + + Michael Angelo, his influence on Blake, 4, 6, 78, 141, 171, 187. + + _Milton_, 31; + discussed, 130; + described, 133. + + MS. Notebook, Blake's, references to, 6, 11, 26, 30, 38, 45, 46, 81, 82. + + Mystical views, Blake's, are misunderstood, 72-79; + explained by Smetham, 75. + + Mythological characters, Blake's, 71, 105, 112, 117. + + + National Gallery, works by Blake in the, 189. + + _Nativity, The_, 161, 162. + + _Nebuchadnezzar_, 22. + + _Nelson, The Spiritual Form of, etc._, 185. + + _Night Thoughts_, designs for Young's, 23; + described, 137. + + + _Oberon, Titania, and Puck_, 169. + + + Paine, Tom, Blake's acquaintance with, 17. + + Pars' drawing-classes, Blake attends, 4. + + _Pitt guiding Behemoth, The Spiritual Form of_, 192. + + Poetic Genius, his theory of the, 67, 68. + + _Poetical Sketches_, 12. + + Prices now brought by Blake's work, 100, 107, 110, 113, 121, 130, 148. + + Prices received by Blake, 21, 35, 38, 100, 149. + + Processes employed by Blake, 38, 82, 91, 150, 166, 168, 179, 186, 187. + + _Procession from Calvary_, 191. + + + Raphael, early love for, 6. + + Religious views, 57-71, 102. + + Religious views, Swedenborg, 57, 58; + pantheism, 62; + Blake's beliefs, 62; + the necessity of contraries, 65; + "art in religion," 67. + + Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his advice to Blake, 19. + + Reynolds, Sir Joshua, Blake's MS. notes on Reynolds' Discourses, 6, 19, + 79. + + _River of Life, The_, 163, 169. + + Robinson, Henry Crabb, his relations with Blake, 2, 40, 45, 47, 51, 54, + 63, 73. + + Rossetti, D. G., appreciations of Blake, 12, 40, 185. + + Rossetti, D. G., owns Blake's MS. Notebook, 30. + + Rubens, early comments on, 6. + + Rylands, proposal to apprentice Blake to, 4. + + + _Satan Watching Adam and Eve_, 161. + + _Satan, Sin, and Death_, 172. + + _Satan Triumphing over Eve_, 171. + + _Satan's Three Accusers_, 121. + + Schiavonetti, Lewis, engraves the drawings for the _Grave_, 36, 140, 145. + + Shakespeare, designs to illustrate, 37. + + Shields, Mr. Frederick J., 52, 138, 183, 185. + + "Single Vision" of Bacon and Newton, 92. + + _Songs of Experience_, 97; + described, 98. + + _Songs of Innocence_, 16; + described, 83. + + Stothard, Thomas Blake's introduction to, 8; + quarrel with, 37, 40, 42, 43. + + Stothard, his _Canterbury Pilgrims_, 37; + exhibited, 38; + described, 176. + + Swedenborg, his influence, 38, 57. + + Swinburne, Mr. A. C., criticisms by, 11, 45, 62, 95, 104, 105, 115. + + + _Tales for Children_, 91. + + Tathams, Blake's friendship with the, 52, 56, 113. + + Technique, his deficiency in, 78. + + _Thel, The Book of_, 17; + described, 87. + + _There is no Natural Religion_, 115. + + _Three Maries with the Angel at the Sepulchre_, 161. + + _Tiriel_, 89. + + + _Urizen, The Book of_, 23; + described, 116. + + + _Vegetative Life_, what Blake meant by the, 2, 64, 127. + + _Virgil's Pastorals_, woodcuts for, 49; + described, 146. + + _Vision of Queen Katherine_, 173. + + _Visionary Heads_, drawn by Blake, 48. + + _Visions of the Daughters of Albion_, 23; + described, 104. + + Visions of Blake; in childhood, 2; + in later years, 17. + + + Water-colour sketches, 187, 188. + + Westminster Abbey, drawings in, 5. + + _Whore of Babylon, The_, 187. + + _Wise and Foolish Virgins, The_, 169. + + Wollstonecraft, Mary, acquaintance with, 17; + designs for her Tales, 91. + + Women, his views on the position of, 70. + + +CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. + +TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of William Blake, by Irene Langridge + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM BLAKE *** + +***** This file should be named 37407-8.txt or 37407-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/4/0/37407/ + +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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