DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH
Blake, like the Patriarch, wrestled through his dark night till the day
dawned. He had wrenched the secret out of the angel messenger. Henceforth
he was an Israelite indeed--a guileless Prince with God, with a word of
God on his lips for such as had ears to hear. Doubtless if we could
arrange the details of human experience we would decree that after such a
contact with the Divine a man should for the rest of his days sail on a
halcyon sea into a haven of rest. But though the giants are slain, their
ghosts return; and Blake, like Jacob, was still haunted by spectres which
only did not deter him because he had painfully learnt to discern between
the shadow and the substance.
The day dawned, but not in the way that most would choose. Worldly success
was farther from him than ever. Instead of himself arising like a blaze of
light on the England that he loved, it was his spirit that was secretly
illumined by the spiritual sun; and while he could live by the memory of
his resplendent vision of Christ, yet as he moved among men he was merely
observed to halt on his thigh, or in other words to be touched with that
frenzy or madness which marks those who have rashly gazed on the sun.
For the next ten years--years of rich spiritual maturity--Blake worked
incessantly; but his life was so obscure that his biographers have been
able to glean but a handful of facts.
Immense changes were taking place in European literature and art. The new
spirit and the old spirit were energetically at work side by side. At
home, Jane Austen brought the novel as understood and treated by Fanny
Burney to consummate perfection. Sir Walter Scott cast a magic glow of
romance over the past. Wordsworth was piercing through the sacramental
significance of nature. Coleridge was dreaming weird mystical dreams in
the open daylight. Abroad, Goethe was exploring the riches of man's fallen
nature. Beethoven, bursting away from Haydn, was introducing a world of
passion into his music. Napoleon was a new kind of man.
Did Blake read the signs of the times? And what did he think of them? We
know that he admired Wordsworth, but feared lest nature should ensnare
him. The rest is guess-work. Blake could hardly have known how to place
himself among the great moderns. It is we, looking back over the lapse of
a century, who can see his deep affinity with many that came after him. I
would say more. He had anticipated much of the better side of Nietzsche's
teaching, but had seen it still more clearly in the character and teaching
of Christ. He is strictly the Evangelist to the modern world enamoured of
art, strength, and spontaneity, to bring it back to Christ.
Amidst these changes we can just discern a change in Blake's spiritual
life which is common to all original geniuses. The Psalmist sang: "Instead
of thy fathers thou shalt have children whom thou mayst make princes."
Blake had hardly had a father, but he had had friends or brothers that
were too apt to play the part of the heavy father. These were passing one
by one, and their places were being taken by young men, sons who sat at
the feet of the wise man and gave him the reverence that was his due.
We cannot say that Blake had a genius for friendship. With none of his old
friends had he been really intimate. He was always uncompromising on his
convictions, and these were so peculiar that not even Swedenborgian
Flaxman could always understand him. His feeling for Flaxman survived with
difficulty. What might have grown to a close friendship for Hayley died
the moment he saw him as he was. Stothard had refused his offered hand
after their quarrel. There remained Fuseli, of whom he wrote:
"The only man that e'er I knew
Who did not make me almost spew
Was Fuseli."
Fuseli was a learned man who could scamper about the world's history with
breathless speed. He lectured on the different ages of art with all the
fluency of a Swiss polyglot waiter. Out of the copious flow of his
eloquence one can, with long patience, fish up such fine things as this on
Michael Angelo: "A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty," or
this on Rembrandt's Crucifixion: "Rembrandt concentrated the tremendous
moment in one flash of pallid light. It breaks on the body of Christ,
shivers down His limbs, and vanishes on the armour of a crucifix; the rest
is gloom."
Fuseli had shared with Blake an admiration for Lavater. In an age of crude
scepticism he openly confessed his faith in Christ. With Blake he reckoned
outline the foundation of great art. Here was much on which the two men
could meet. But Fuseli never quite dug down to fundamental principles.
He declared again and again that "our ideas are the offspring of our
senses," and Blake regarded such damnable Lockian heresy as rank atheism;
and among his other heresies, also damnable in Blake's eyes, was an
enthusiasm for Titian and Correggio, and a summary denial that Albert
Duerer was a man of genius. Hence, Fuseli and Blake, with regard for one
another, were never intimate friends. It was about the year 1818 that
Blake found himself in the midst of a new and younger circle. George
Cumberland, himself young and orthodox on outline, introduced him to John
Linnell and John Varley.
John Varley moved from 2 Harris Place to 5 Broad Street, Golden Square,
about 1806. His house was shared with William Mulready, who married his
sister. His wife, Esther, was sister of John Gisborne, who moved in the
Shelley and Godwin set. Another sister married Copley Fielding. Here was a
group of artists connected by marriage.
Varley helped to found the Water Colour Society in 1804, and drew to
himself many young men who were more or less his pupils. Among these,
besides Mulready, were W. H. Hunt, John Linnell, Samuel Palmer, James
Holmes.
With the big, fat, genial Varley Blake soon became friends. Varley was a
typical once-born man, and his clean earthiness made its irresistible
appeal to the twice-born Blake with his head in the skies. Besides his
water-colours he pursued with equal ardour and success the study of
astrology.
Minds of Blake's order have been apt to believe in astrology, like Jacob
Boehme and Paracelsus; but Varley failed to convert Blake because, no
doubt, of the extremely materialistic explanation that he could only give
of his science. The stars, according to the astrology that the Western
mind scoffs at, are supposed to exert a direct influence on the destinies
and characters of men. But there is an Oriental doctrine that dispenses
with such a crude theory, considering that the stars have no more direct
influence on character than the hands of a clock on time. Like all
mysticism, East and West, it regards the universe as the macrocosm and man
the microcosm. Between the two there is a correspondence, and therefore
the state of the microcosm can be read by the starry indications of the
macrocosm as the time can be known by the hands of an exact clock or
sundial.
Varley understood nothing of all this, and so failed to convince Blake.
But he gave him what he needed far more, hearty good will and
unpatronizing faith and reverence. Blake could pursue his visions and
report on them, certain that his companion would believe in his marvels
with that perfect credulity which so many are ready to give who have
rejected the marvels of Christianity. At his bidding he evoked visions of
past worthies, and sketched them while they waited. From 1819 to, 1820
Blake executed no less than fifty heads, including his famous _Ghost of a
Flea_.
Those of us who were thrilled in our boyhood by the tales of Lord Lytton
like to know that Varley was consulted by him before writing his
fascinating _Zanoni_ and _Strange Story_.
A still greater comfort and help to Blake was John Linnell.
John Linnell began by copying George Morland, passed under the influence
of Sir Benjamin West, and then became a pupil of Varley, who sent him
straight to nature. Varley's brother Cornelius attended a baptist chapel,
and he induced Linnell to go with him and listen to the sermons of its
pastor, the Reverend John Martin. He was convicted of sin, converted, duly
immersed, and regularly enrolled. Henceforth religion of a puritanic kind
ruled his life, and made him easy to dissenters of the different sects,
but stiff and uncompromising towards the Church of England and the
clergy. At one time he had thoughts of joining the quakers, whose position
is far different from that of the baptists; but he was deterred by Bernard
Barton, who, though fond of art himself, warned him that the Friends as a
whole looked with extreme suspicion on anyone addicted to such a
questionable pursuit as that of making pictures.
Blake was introduced to Linnell by George Cumberland in 1818 at Linnell's
house in Rathbone Place. They soon became intimate. Their religious
conception of art united them, and Linnell much relished Blake's tirades
against kings and priests. It was only when Blake spoke with equal licence
of the sex passion that Linnell felt an adverse tug at their friendship.
Linnell took over for his country house Collins' Farm, North End,
Hampstead, and there Blake became a regular visitor on Sunday afternoons
until sickness and death put an end to his visits.
North End, now in the County of London, is still a village on the Heath.
On Saturdays, Sundays, and Bank Holidays it is overlaid with trippers,
orange-peel, and paper bags. But no sooner do the holiday-makers return to
work than North End and its marvellous portion of heath resumes its
mystery, and the dreamer can dream undisturbed till the next people's
holiday.
It is pleasant to think of Blake arriving at Collins' Farm, then after the
friendly greetings emerging by the Bull and Bush, sacred meeting-house of
many artists, crossing the road to Rotten Row, mounting the hillock and
viewing the fir-trees which still stand in all their mysterious beauty. If
only North End had been south instead of north! Blake declared with
seeming perverseness that the North upset his stomach. Varley would have
explained to him that his ruling sign being Leo, he required like all
lions the warm sunny south.
Linnell introduced him to many of his young friends, who, catching the
infection, hailed Blake as a master and sat at his feet to learn. We note
this deference because it is what Blake so richly deserved; but even among
his new young friends there was nothing like complete discipleship.
Blake's art was an inseparable part of his whole passionate, chequered
spiritual life. No one whose inner life does not repeat the same broad
outlines can really approach near to him as an artist. James Holmes, with
his easy, superficial, courtly life, might teach Blake to brighten his
water-colours, but he was completely outside of his spiritual travail, and
could only wonder mildly why young idealists like Calvert, Palmer, and
Richmond could be so preoccupied with Blake's half-crazed thoughts.
Even among those chosen three, there were no sons of thunder.
Edward Calvert caught Blake's spirit in his lovely and simple woodcuts,
but quite rightly followed his own bent, which led him ultimately along a
different path from Blake's zigzag lightning tract. The master always
transpierced Nature, and lived in a transcendental region: Calvert, serene
and calm, detected the heart of the Divine beating equally in Nature, and
reproduced what he heard and saw in musical and sweet landscapes, where
storms never come, and which modern artists would probably prefer to see
disturbed by an earthquake.
Samuel Palmer, with youthful impulse and generosity, gave himself to
Blake, and, rendered receptive by his love and enthusiasm, soon
assimilated all the master's principles. Palmer's rich nature allowed of
much reverence for Linnell too, and in his early work it is easy to find
examples first of Blake's influence and then of Linnell's. Like Calvert,
he was deeply and equably devout. He did not demand that austerity which
drew Linnell to the baptist, John Martin; nor that passion for which Blake
went to hell. The gentler elements of his soul led him away from harsh
sects to the more temperate Church of England, which can, among other
things, still nourish those souls that require the kind of diet that
George Herbert could provide so bountifully.
We look with extreme interest to see how Blake's professed disciples set
about to unite their religion and art. They did it as many other Christian
artists have done it, as Fra Angelico did supremely well; yet they missed
Blake's daemonic energy, and so have failed to meet that demand of our own
age which will at all cost have passion for the driving force of religion
if it is to have religion at all. Samuel Palmer painted and etched some
exquisite pictures; but he was in after years gently apologetic for
Blake's _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, and he left the problem of the
synthesis of religion and art in the light of Christianity precisely where
it was left by the best Italian Christian artists.
George Richmond completed the little inner circle of three disciples. He
was only sixteen when he met Blake at John Linnell's, North End, and then
walked with him back to Fountain Court, Strand, thrilling with a unique
impression as if he were verily walking with the prophet Isaiah. For a
while he was plastic clay in the hands of Blake, revealing the master's
influence in _Abel the Shepherd_ and _Christ and the Woman of Samaria_,
but like his friends, Calvert and Palmer, he had sufficient native energy
to follow his own instinct, and when he found himself in portrait painting
there is nothing to remind us even remotely of Blake. His sitters appear a
noble family. Cardinal Newman, Bishop Wilberforce, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs
Gaskell, and many others are extraordinarily beautiful, and might all be
taken for brothers and sisters. Richmond's religious feelings brought him
into fellowship with the tractarian movement, which of all recent
religious movements in England allows most standing-ground for one devoted
to religion and art. He did not paint Titans, but he puts us in love with
his beautiful family, and that surely is no mean achievement.
Among Blake's friends must be mentioned Crabb Robinson and Frederick
Tatham, not because of their intrinsic importance to Blake, but their use
to us. Robinson was often sorely perplexed by the vehement paradoxes that
Blake wilfully poured into his ears; but at the same time, he thought it
worth while to jot them down in his diary.
Tatham came near enough to Blake to enable him to fulfil several of the
indispensable qualifications of the biographer. Afterwards he became an
Irvingite, and, conscience-ridden, destroyed many of Blake's works that
had come into his hands because he reckoned them unsound.
One other very curious friendship stands out, that with Thomas Griffiths
Wainewright.
Wainewright was born out of due season. He might have avoided the
unpleasant and ugly things that befell him if he had been a contemporary
of the Borgias. He was an artist, and art is no respecter of persons. We
are tempted to say that art is fallen man's supreme consolation. It is
assuredly the meeting-place between a certain kind of saint and a certain
kind of sinner. The highest artist-saint, like Jesus Christ, appears to
create himself rather than works of art, and such always makes an
irresistible appeal to the artist-sinner, as we see that Christ did to
Oscar Wilde in his _De Profundis_ and to George Moore in his _Brook
Kerith_. The latter seems to be as far as the artist can reach without
religion, and it could teach most Christians something about their Master.
When Blake discovered that the Real Man in each one of us has imagination
for his chief and working faculty, he overcame once for all the provoking
dualism of art and religion, and at the same time he became an attraction
to those who live an imaginative life, especially among sinners.
Wainewright was drawn to Blake for precisely the same reason that many
modern enthusiasts are who could hardly be reckoned religious. He is
permanently interesting to the psychologist as to the artist, and hence he
could not escape the notice of Lord Lytton, who introduced him into his
_Lucretia_, and above all of Oscar Wilde, who darted upon him, and who,
with such a subject, was loosened to write in his most witty, brilliant,
and characteristic style.
Here I must mention, in order, Blake's chief works from 1810 to the end.
In 1793 was published a small book of engravings _For Children, The Gates
of Paradise_. Blake re-issued this in 1810, changing the _For Children_ to
_For the Sexes_. The changes do not throw fresh light on Blake. Rather,
what is important to know, we see, in spite of the changes, that Blake's
deepest thoughts were the same in 1795 and 1810. I will quote only the
first two lines:
"Mutual Forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the Gates of Paradise."
Forgiveness of sins, so impossible for the Pharisee, so easy for the
artist, is the heart of Christ's gospel. Blake leaned to that form of
Christianity which best understood forgiveness. At this time he was
inclined to think that the Church of Rome came nearest to Christ.
Blake reprinted _The Prologue and Characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims_ in
1812. Then followed five years of indefatigable production, but the works
are lost for this world, though Blake would probably say that they were
published in the other, and read, and remembered.
About 1817 he engraved leaflets, _Laocoon_, and _On Homer's Poetry_, and
_On Virgil_.
The first is covered with small writing, fresh proverbs of hell, which are
the same in substance as the earlier proverbs, but less provocative. The
_Laocoon_ perfectly expressed his own experience during years of obscure
struggle. He found the same mighty conflict described from cover to cover
of the Bible. Christians have been accustomed to see there the history of
their sin, conviction, struggle, and victory. Blake had nothing to say
against all this, but he named that which was striving for the victory the
spirit of art, and all the things that accompany the conflict--prayer,
praise, fasting--he explained in terms of art. Protestantism had made
necessary such a vehement vindication of the beautiful. To-day, I suppose,
we accept naturally Blake's aphorisms, but need to rediscover some of
those other things that protestantism and catholicism alike have insisted
on so uncompromisingly in the past.
From _On Homer's Poetry_ I quote the following:
"Unity and Morality are secondary considerations and belong to Philosophy
and not to Poetry, to Exception and not to Rule, to Accident and not to
Substance. The Ancients called it eating of the Tree of Good and Evil."
In other words, poetry, like life and love and other instinctive things,
goes deeper and before our fine-spun distinctions of number and morality.
Philosophers have sprung up since Blake's day who are wonderfully agreed
with him.
This on the cause of European wars is striking: "The Classics! it is the
Classics, and not Goths nor Monks, that desolate Europe with Wars."
From _On Virgil_ I gather this, which needs no comment: "A warlike State
never can produce Art. It will rob and plunder and accumulate into one
place, and translate and copy and buy and sell and criticize, but not
make."
During Blake's last year in South Molton Street he executed seventeen
woodcuts for Dr Thornton's _Pastorals of Virgil_. These are very simple
and childlike or childish, according to our state when we look at Blake's
work. They seem to me of very unequal merit; but the best of them are
invaluable, for they show that Blake at the age of sixty-three had not
lost that childlike innocence, the parody of which is all that most men
attain to in their second childhood.
In 1821 Blake removed to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, where he had the
plainest of neutral rooms, not without value as a background for his
visions. Here relief was at hand, but he knew it not. Harassed by poverty,
he must raise money somehow. His collection of engravings, which had
steadily grown since the day that he had endowed his bride with it as his
sole treasure, was marketable, and with as little fuss as need be he sold
it to Messrs Colnaghi and Company. It was the final self-stripping.
Humbled and disciplined by the inexorable years, having surrendered
himself and his last precious possession, he was ready to bring forth the
rich fruit of his mature genius. His old friend and patron Butts gave him
a commission to paint twenty-one water-colour designs illustrating the
Book of Job. He was allowed to show them, and they drew forth from his
friend Linnell a further commission to execute and engrave a duplicate
set, with the written agreement that he should receive L100 for the
designs and copyright and another L100 out of the profits. There were no
profits forthcoming; but Linnell paid him in instalments L50 besides the
first L100. We may note here that the Royal Academy in 1822 made him a
grant of L25. And so, at last, Blake had sufficient means to enable him to
devote himself to his joyous work without the gnawing distraction of
poverty and want.
There is no book in the world better suited for Blake's genius than the
Book of Job. It has been in itself a complete Bible to the mystic in all
ages. In it is given a marvellous description in dramatic form of that
mysterious and awful self-stripping which the saint experiences after his
conversion and not before. It is an expansion of the text that even here
death is the gate of life. The same truth is insisted on by all the
prophets, especially by the prophets to the nations like Ezekiel and
Jonah; by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; by the
personal experience of St Paul; and recently by Hegel, till it has become
a commonplace both in religion and philosophy.
Blake was troubled by no modern criticism of the Book of Job, which by
post-dating it several hundred years has robbed it of much of its literary
interest. To him it was the porch of the Sanctuary, the oldest book in the
Bible, at once the most ancient and most modern of books. Job, after his
dark night of testing and judgment, emerged simple and guileless, a
Patriarch who served God solely because that was the supremely right thing
to do. Who was Job? The Book gives no hint of his parentage. Who wrote
the wonderful prologue? Who could write it? Again the Book is silent.
Tradition says Moses; and if tradition speak truly, then several very
interesting things follow. Job was probably the son of Issachar,[6] and as
such went down with his father into Egypt when Joseph had been advanced in
that land. He would then remove to Uz in Chaldaea, carrying within
treasures of Egyptian learning. In later years, Moses, fleeing from Egypt
into the desert of Midian, would become his neighbour. Moses is admittedly
one of the world's greatest initiates. As such he could certainly have
written the prologue and the epilogue. And how lofty a level the drama
maintains throughout! Even Job's friends, who pour out pithy things in
rich poetical language surpassing that attained by all laureates, are
rebuked for uttering only what everybody knows. Yet so universal is the
Book in its symbolism that it can afford, if need be, to dispense with
picturesque details of its authorship and date, and stand simply on its
merits as an inspired dramatic epic of Man's passage from his
consciousness of degradation as a worm, and his stubbornness as a wild
ass's colt, to the dignity and power of a son of God.
Blake had already traced the course of man's day of judgment in Night IX
of _The Four Zoas_, and had painted a fresco of the subject in 1820. In
the poem he had used his own peculiar mythology, and closed his poem to
nearly all readers. The Book of Job obliged him to drop his own symbolism
and use the simple and universal symbols that the drama itself supplies. A
brief reference to each design in order will make his purpose clear.
[Illustration: Then went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord]
_Design I._--Job and his wife and family, like true Israelites, are at
prayer under a spreading fig-tree. The shepherd sons have for the time
left their flocks at rest and hanged their musical instruments on the
tree. At first sight the picture presents a scene of idyllic peace. But
there are ominous signs. The sun is setting, night is fast coming, and the
fig-tree suggests the immemorial symbol of Israel's wrestling during the
dark night.
_Design II._--An illustration of the prologue of the Book. It is a
marvellous representation of what an initiate only--a Moses, a
Blake--could have imagined of the cosmos, with its heavenly portion
peopled with the angelic sons of God in the middle, the earth and its
inhabitants below, and above and beyond all God in His Heaven.
Satan, a magnificent figure, comes with the Sons of God to present himself
before God. In his fiery aura are two shadowy figures making with him a
trinity of evil.
_Design III._--The crash of Job's family. He has built his house, and
prospered regardless of those who made it possible for him to build it;
and in the sudden turn of events it has become a mere ruin.
_Design IV._--Job and his wife are under the fig-tree, the man bearing
with noble and unbroken fortitude the arrival of bad news.
_Design V._--Once more the cosmos. Satan is rushing headlong towards earth
to wreak his full power on Job in the midst of his charities, yet
forbidden to touch the one thing that Job would so gladly surrender, his
life. Heaven cannot remain impassive at suffering on earth. Its sun is
darkened and the Almighty on His Throne is grieved at His heart.
_Design VI._--Satan's last malice on Job. He is reduced to sheer nakedness
and wretchedness. Nothing of his former life that gave him comfort remains
to him. He is "wrecked on God." "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken
away, Blessed be the name of the Lord." With such faith and resignation
his sun has not quite set.
_Design VII._--The friends arrive. Once more Blake felt at home from his
personal experience. He had never had beyond Catherine and Robert a
perfect spiritual friend. He had never lacked corporeal ones. The
remembrance of them gave zest and spirit to the portrayal of Eliphaz the
Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.
_Design VIII._--Job's corporeal friends have done their worst. They and
his wife have quenched his last hope. His sun has gone down. Naked and
covered with boils from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he
lifts up both hands and curses the day that saw his birth.
_Design IX._--The vision of Eliphaz, and his terror, for which Blake
recalled his own terror on the threshold.
_Design X._--The corporeal friends stripped of their wordy disguise. They
are spiritual enemies that point the finger of scorn at the just, upright
man. There is a glimmer of light on the horizon, for Job can still say,
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."
_Design XI._--A worse stage of misery. Hitherto Job had held fast his
faith in God. Now he no longer sees God as He is. In the terrors of his
dreams and visions he cannot discern between God and Satan. Satan
stretches over him with a face reminiscent of God's. As Job turns away his
head in horror, it becomes impossible for him to detect the cloven hoof;
and so he touches that horror of great darkness, worse than all
physical suffering, where not only man but God has turned His face, and in
Its place loom the commandments of stone, which recall the darkness and
thunders of Sinai.
[Illustration: When the morning Stars sang together, & all the Sons of God
shouted for joy]
_Design XII._--The horror of darkness has passed. The stars are shining,
and the youthful Elihu essays to utter the wisdom that the old men have
lacked. Blake could recall the ministry of his young friends, who had come
so recently into his life, and by their love had caused the stars to
appear. Elihu does not utter perfect wisdom, for that cannot be reached
from human experience.
_Design XIII._--The source of perfect wisdom. "The Lord answered Job out
of the Whirlwind." Job sees Him as He is in His true lineaments, and
listens as the Almighty speaks. Blake, too, reads breathlessly the
marvellous description of creation till his spirit flames up, and the
creative fire gives birth to his next most glorious design.
_Design XIV._--The creation and the immense joy of it. There is the
creation of the whole cosmos, when the morning Stars sang together, and
all the Sons of God shouted for joy. Never was such joy again till the
beginning of the New Creation, when the Son of God was born in Bethlehem,
as Luke, artist and saint, narrates with such artless simplicity and
beauty. The Scriptures assure us of a time when that joy shall be eternal.
Meanwhile it is the artists who in true creation have a foretaste of the
joy. It is Blake who has presented it in its most spiritual and universal
aspect.
_Design XV._--A grotesque. I presume that Blake, like Leonardo da Vinci,
discovered something grotesque as he explored the universe.
_Design XVI._--The universe once more. It is the consummation of the
judgment. Satan and his shadowy companions who dwell in man have taken
definite form and substance. The man who has walked the way of excess has
brought all his latent evil out, and has given it substance, so that he
can arise in his strength and cast it out for ever.
_Design XVII._--Job's beatific vision. He is blessed and his house, now
only his wife, but through her and God's blessing he may be fruitful and
multiply, and build his house in the divine order. His sun has risen and
will no more set.
_Design XVIII._--Job stands before an altar of burnt-offering. Like Jacob
he has prevailed, and God accepts him and his prayers for his friends.
_Design XIX._--Job and his wife once more under the fig-tree, whose fruit
has ripened. He is the recipient of friendly gifts and offerings from his
neighbours.
_Design XX._--Job, with memories engraven on the chambers of his imagery,
stretching forth his hands over his new family of beautiful daughters.
_Design XXI._--A return to the first scene. But the sun is rising, and Job
and his family, taking their instruments of art, are worshipping God in
the beauty of holiness.
Blake completed his engravings for Job in March 1825, and they were
published March 1826.
They might well have been the crowning work of his life, and followed by
his _Nunc dimittis_, but there was boundless mental energy in the old man,
though his body was failing.
[Illustration: FROM THE DANTE SERIES.]
It was in 1825 that Blake met Crabb Robinson at the house of Mr Aders,
where Mrs Aders, daughter of Raphael Smith, was in the habit of
entertaining many interesting people.
Crabb Robinson was a most excellent man--well accoutred, steady on his
legs, with well-set head, without superstition, and just enough prejudice
to starch his mind.
He knew Blake at the time that he was learning Italian for the sake of
Dante that he might execute Dante designs for Linnell. From Robinson's
reminiscences, we do just get a glimpse of Blake struggling with Dante,
and delighting to mystify his respectable friend. Unfortunately, the
reported references in their conversations to Dante are few, though enough
perhaps to indicate Blake's attitude. He was not one of Dante's elect. But
with closer study he was beginning to fall under his spell, and we may
safely surmise that if Dante had come into Blake's life in his youth,
instead of Swedenborg, Blake would have become the greatest catholic
mystic artist of the age.
Little more remains to be told.
Blake in great pain of body--stomach trouble and shivering fits--was
driven to his bed. When he knew the end was near, he said to his wife: "I
have no grief but in leaving you, Catherine. We have lived happy, we have
lived long, we have been ever together, but we shall be divided soon. Why
should I fear death? Nor do I fear it. I have endeavoured to live as
Christ commanded, and I have sought to worship God truly in my own home,
when I was not seen of men."
While the wife ministered to him he exclaimed suddenly, "You have ever
been an angel to me, I will draw you." And he did. In answer to her, he
expressed a wish to be buried at Bunhill Fields by the Church of England.
At midday on August 12th, 1827, he burst into strong joyous song, and then
corrected his previous word about parting by assuring Catherine that he
would always be there to take care of her. Then he remained quite quiet
till his spirit passed away.
EPILOGUE
Life is a voyage of discovery or rediscovery. Those, like Blake, born in a
Christian land make the same voyage. The Christian tradition is handed on
to us in our tender infancy, and most people take what their immediate
teachers tell them, and live on that dry stock for the rest of their days.
But the sinner and the genius, like Blake, early throw their inheritance
overboard, and driven by native energy go in adventurous quest of new
lands. The first half of Blake's life was spent thus. He would rebel at
all costs, he would above all protest against what he hated--the religion
of repression.
For many years Christianity and repression were for him synonymous terms.
His craving was for expression. Parents, teachers, priests, kings,
governments, were enemies to spontaneous self-expression. Then they must
go. His youthful exuberance admitted of no half-measures. Like Ezekiel and
Christ, he poured out his invective against hireling shepherds: unlike
them, he ceased for a time to believe in good shepherds. One and all they
were out to repress men's instincts and passions, until, driven in, the
pent-up passion poisoned their whole nature, or in the weaker sort was
rendered passive. Blake proclaimed his doctrine with vehemence, but no one
regarded him.
Pursuing this course for many years, he perceived some wonderful things.
Art is expression; and he made an application of all the glories of art to
human character. Teach men to express themselves, and then instead of
their being as dull and similar as a flock of sheep governed by the herd
instinct, they would grow into a beautiful variety. Man would create
himself as an artist creates his works. The same law governed both.
Repression when successful induced a nerveless, sapless type. Man became
an overwhipped dog. Expression produced a strong, beautiful character
above all petty and tiresome rules of conduct. The conduct of such is
carelessly right.
It was by Blake's frank proclamation of the _ego_ that he anticipated so
much of what the modern apostles of the superman have made us all familiar
with. From Ibsen's _Doll's House_ to Nietzsche's _Thus spake Zarathustra_,
confidence in the _ego_ has been proclaimed as the means to liberty,
beauty, and sovereignty; and this has been accompanied by revivals on a
large scale of those ancient mystery religions that turn on the culture of
the divine _ego_.
This was a road of excess which Blake pursued as far as an individual
might. In the nineteenth century the law of the _ego_, the struggle for
life, the survival of the fittest, brute force, were regarded as all one,
and transferred from the individual to the State, till in a few years the
world was plunged into war.
Blake's voyage of rediscovery began during the Reign of Terror. The new
teachers, like Swedenborg and Godwin, Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft,
failed to satisfy his own craving for expression. The Reign of Terror
appalled him when it showed him his principle at work in the proletariat.
Then it was that turning again to the Evangelists he made the wonderful
discovery, which later apostles of the _ego_ have not made, that Jesus
Christ was the perfect example and embodiment of his vision. He had
pictured to himself a man, impelled by a creative passion, whose
character in every part should be manifestly the outcome of fiery energy.
And there was the Man in the Subject of the Gospels. But he saw that Jesus
Christ could not be labelled or classed. There was egoistic
self-expression in Him, and there was self-renunciation. Somehow He had
altogether escaped the modern dilemma of self-expression or
self-sacrifice. Both were magnificently present in Him and united, because
His self-expression was resting on His self-surrender to God. Give up God,
and man swings perpetually between duty to neighbour and duty to self.
Believe in and surrender to God, and each falls into its proper place.
This was not the only synthesis in the character of Jesus. He was a union
of all possible contraries. Gentleness and fierceness; non-resistance and
aggressive force; non-resentment and fiery invective; forgiveness and
severe justice, haughty pride and lowliness; self-confidence and utter
dependence upon God, all were in Jesus. Henceforth Blake could keep his
vision of Jesus and his vision of art, for they were one.
The next stage in rediscovery was to find out what the great body of
dogmatic truth had affirmed about Jesus down the Christian centuries. Here
he made little progress. He probably felt, as we all do at times, that the
simplicity of the gospel was lost in the maze of dogmatic subtleties. The
negative aspect of dogma, that it rules out all that would infringe on
that simplicity, never occurred to him. His mind was governed and
distracted by Hindoo pantheism, and catholic anthropomorphism filtered and
diluted through Swedenborg. Even after he had repudiated Swedenborg the
distraction remained. His new understanding of Christ taught him that he
must accept the ultimate antinomy of good and evil, and that therefore
Christ's heaven and hell must remain; but the pantheism never abated its
watery flood, and the emphatic catholic teaching of transcendence and
immanence gained no sufficient hold to deliver his mind.
The truth is that Blake was not a great thinker, still less a
system-builder. He ought to have found the best Christian system while
young and kept to it. Then he could have lived his life of vision within
coherent bounds. Clear, sharp dogma, like outline in art, would have given
rest to his mind, substance to his visions, and saved him from the waste
of pouring out a torrent of incoherent sayings containing scraps of
gnosticism, theosophy, rosicrucianism, and almost every heresy under the
sun.
The master-mind in his youth who could have given him a sound system was
Dr Johnson, and he would not listen to him. How should the arch-rebel pay
any attention to the arch-conservator? Dr Johnson said many foolish things
about things of no great importance: he was wise in great matters. An
ounce of folly, like a dead fly in the ointment, suffices to put off the
fastidious rebel, who will seize hold of any excuse. Eventually Blake
subscribed to the same creed as Dr Johnson. That surely is a marvellous
unanimity for such diverse minds.
The master-mind in his age who could have given him a better system than
his own, and to whom he was beginning to listen, was Dante. His
catholicism may have been of a medieval pattern, but it was very little
infected with the time-spirit; it is even now finer than Swedenborg's
fabrication, and modern compared with the gnosticism that bulked so
largely in Blake's mind.
Blake makes no disciples, and no school can claim him, but he speaks to
all who have any mental equipment. His vision of Christ, if we can make it
our own and fill out its defects, will put us beyond the modern worship
of the superman, and take us out of that sectarianism which gains
ascendancy for a little while because of its lightness and
fragmentariness.
The confusion in Blake's mental life affects his art. He declared
consistently in times of clear vision that outline, form, and foundation
are the essence of spiritual things. This is beyond anything to be found
in Sir Joshua's _Discourses_, and anticipates Benedetto Croce when he says
that art is an ultimate, that "form is constant and is spiritual
activity," while "matter is changeable," yet he accomplished many designs
that Reynolds could have taught him to correct.
His later poems suffer still more. The energy in them is terrific, and
they are filled with flashes of inspiration; but their atmosphere is
murky, and never clears for more than fifty lines at a time. They are
storehouses, but the one who would get anything out of them must bring his
taper with him.
The early short poems, on the contrary, shine with their own light. _The
Tiger_ and _The Emmet_ are written before his mind has time to plunge into
the penumbra of his disorderly system.
Blake was still young in spirit when he died. One feels with him, as with
Tolstoi, that he had far from come to the end of his tether. He was one of
the few to whose years another threescore might have been added with
advantage. Where would he have arrived? I think when we remember that for
more than twenty years before his death he was on the voyage of
rediscovery, we may hazard the guess that he would have reached the
catholic form of Christianity, having thrown overboard his private
symbolism on the way; and that then he would have produced great, long
poems of crystalline clearness, which would have placed him by the side of
the master-poets of the ages.
Yet it is idle work guessing at what might have been. We blame a man's
times, or birth, or church, or what not for his failures, when we should
look for some fundamental lack in his own equipment. That Blake was not
quite one of our conquerors, then, we will not attribute to the eighteenth
century or to Swedenborg's predominant influence in his early life, but
simply to the fact that he lacked the strong, virile reason that could
keep pace with the on-rush of his visions. He was all Los: Urizen, whom he
repudiated with such scorn, alone could have balanced his nature and led
him to the supreme achievement.
INDEX
_Abel the Shepherd_, 176
Abstract Philosophy, 109
_Adam and Eve observed by Satan_, 123
Aders, Mr and Mrs, 187
_Age of Reason_, 87, 93
Ahania, 111
Akashic Records, 132
Albion, 149-50
_America: A Prophecy_, 96-7, 98
American Independence, War of, 86, 87, 98
_Ancient of Days_, 101
_Angelic Wisdom_, 58
Angelico, Fra, 176
Arblay, M. d', 85
Asia, 109
Astrology, 172-3
Augustine, St, 152
Austen, Jane, 170
Barbauld, Mrs, 30
Bartolozzi, 17, 123, 154
Barton, Bernard, 174
_Bas Bleu_, 28
Basire, 17, 18
Bastille, the, 89, 90, 92
Bath, Lord, 29
Beaumont and Fletcher, 33
Beethoven, 170
Bible, the, 122, 133
Bildad, 184
Blair's _Grave_, 154-9
Blake, Catherine, 30, 31, 37, 38, 40, 66, 148
Blake, James (Sen.), 12, 39
Blake, James (Jun.), 39
Blake, Robert, 14, 39, 40, 45
Blake, William, born, 11;
baptized, 12;
vision at Peckham Rye, 13;
books read, 14;
learns drawing from Mr Pars, 15;
apprenticed to Basire, 17;
joins the Academy under Moser, 21;
designs _Morning_, or _Glad Day_, 22;
falls in love with Polly Wood, 23;
marries Catherine Boucher, 24;
meets Flaxman, 30;
goes to Mrs Mathew's parties, 30;
on war, 34-5;
lodges at 23 Green Street, 37;
moves to 27 Broad Street, 39;
nurses Robert, 40;
moves to 28 Poland Street, 40;
engraves after Stothard, 44;
Robert imparts method of engraving, 45;
comments on Lavater's Aphorisms, 51;
and Swedenborg, 55-80;
reads and annotates _Angelic Wisdom_, 62-5;
subscribes his name to tenets of the New Church, 66;
on Swedenborg, 72;
takes leave of Swedenborg, 80;
among the rebels, 89;
wears the _bonnet rouge_, 89;
on sex, 94-6;
moves to 13 Hercules Buildings, 98;
engraves _Europe: A Prophecy_, 99, 101;
illustrates Buerger's _Lenore_, 111;
goes to Felpham, 117;
paints miniatures, 119-21;
learns Greek from Hayley, 121;
returns to London, 127;
South Molton Street, 127;
vision clears after visit to Truchsess gallery, 129;
and Sir J. Reynolds, 156-9;
writes descriptive catalogue, 161;
and Chaucer, 162-3;
vision of Jesus Christ, 165-8;
new friends, 172;
and Varley, 172-3;
removes to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, 180;
sells his collection of engravings, 180;
and Book of Job, 182-86;
and Dante, 187;
illness, 187;
death, 188
Blue-stockings, the, 26-36
Boehme, Jacob, 23, 47, 49, 51, 56, 58, 72, 118, 165, 172
Bond Street, 21
_Book for a Rainy Day_, 30
_Book of Ahania_, 110
_Book of Job_, 181-2
_Book of Los_, 110
_Book of Urizen_, 106
Boucher, Catherine, 24
Bourdon, 129
Bousset, 61
Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, 123
Brahma, 109
Bray, Mrs, 160, 162
Breughel, 129
Bronte, Charlotte, 177
_Brook Kerith_, 178
Brooke, Mrs, 30
Bull and Bush, North End, Hampstead, 174
Bunyan, John, 140
Buerger, 111, 112
Burke, Edmund, 85, 89
Burney, Dr, 29
Burney, Fanny, 28, 42, 85, 86, 170
Butler, Samuel, 166
Butts, Thomas, 121, 124, 125, 127, 132
Calvert, Edward, 175, 176
_Candide_, 28
Caracci, 126
Carter, Mrs, 26, 27, 28, 30
_Castle of Otranto_, 34
Catherine of Siena, St, 53, 133
Chapone, Mrs, 30, 31
Chatterton, 14
Chaucer, 161, 162, 163
Chaucer's _Canterbury Pilgrims_, 159
Chesterfield, Lord, _Letters to his Son_, 27
Christ, 152
_Christ and the Woman of Samaria_, 176
_Clod, the_, 104
Coleridge, S. T., 82, 170
Collins' Farm, North End, Hampstead, 174
Correggio, 126, 172
Cosmos, the, 134, 147, 183, 185
Cowper, W., 82, 116, 123, 124, 130
_Cowper, Life of_, 130
_Crime and Punishment_, 98
Croce, Benedetto, 193
Cromek, Robert Hartley, 154-6, 159, 160, 165
Cumberland, George, 172
Dante, 73, 114, 133, 187, 192
Deism, 144-5
_De Profundis_, 178
Designs for Job, 183-6
_Dialogues of the Dead_, 26
Dogma, 192
Dostoieffski, 98
Dualism, 143
Duerer, Albert, 16, 17, 41, 42, 129, 172
_Earl Godwin_, 42
Ego-theism, 71
Elihu, 185
_Elinor_, 112
Eliot, George, 112
Eliphaz, 184
Elizabethan age, 16
_Emmet, the_, 193
Engleheart, 160
Enitharmon, 99, 100, 108
Eno, 111
_Enquiry concerning Political Justice_, 82
_Epipsychidion_, 95
_Essay on Old Maids_, 121
Essenes, the, 61
Europe, 109
_Europe: A Prophecy_, 99-101
_Evelina_, 42
Ezekiel, 137, 144, 181, 189
Ezra, 118
_Fair Elinor_, 34
Felpham, 117, 119, 125, 126
Fenelon, 50, 53
Fielding, Copley, 172
Fingal, 14
Flaxman, 22, 24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 159, 160,
171
Flaxman, Maria, 114
Flemish _picturesque_, 125
Florentine School of Art, 16
Fludd, 23
Foote, Samuel, 49
Fordyce, Dr, 85
France, 109
Francis of Assisi, St, 45
Franklin, 96
French Revolution, 85, 87, 89, 90-2, 101, 118
Fuseli, 24, 81, 171-2
Fuzon, 110, 111
Garrick, 115
Gaskell, Mrs, 177
_Gates of Paradise_, 178
Genlis, Madame de, 86
_Ghost of a Flea_, 173
Gibbon, Edward, 115
Gilchrist, 45
_Glad Day_, 42
Gnosticism, 134
Godwin, W., 82-4, 86, 87, 88, 92, 145, 172, 190
Goethe, 30, 36, 54, 170
Goldsmith, Oliver, 18
Gordon, Lord George, 23
Gothic architecture, 17
Grand Style, 125
Gregory, Dr, 85
Guyon, Madame, 23, 47, 50
_Gwen, King of Norway_, 34
Habakkuk, 129
Halls of Los, 122
Hamilton, 42
Hardy, 88
Harlow, 160
Haydn, 170
Hayley, William, 114-130, 137, 139-42, 153-4, 165, 171
_Head of Romney_, 153
Heath, James, 160
Heaven and Hell, 78
Hegel, 181
Hell, 57
Hemskerck, Martin, 16
Herbert, George, 176
Hervey, 49, 50
Hesketh, Lady, 116
Highland Society, 14
Hogarth, 42, 43, 158
Holbein, Hans, 129
Holcroft, 88
Holmes, James, 172, 175
Hoppner, 162
_How sweet I roam'd_, 16, 33
Hume, 36
Hunt, W. H., 172
Ibsen, 190
Imagination, 122, 125
Imlay, Charles, 86
Immanence, 192
Inspiration, 122, 132, 133
Isaiah, 118
Jacob, 169
Jefferson, 87
_Jerusalem_, 113, 131, 132, 142, 149, 151
Jesus Christ, 165-8, 189, 190-1
Job, Book of, 76
John, Saint, 152
Johnson, bookseller, 22, 81, 82, 86, 90, 123
Johnson, Dr, 20, 27, 28, 36, 47, 48, 145, 192
Johnson, Rev. John, 119, 122
Jonah, 181
Jonson, Ben, 14, 16, 31, 33
_Joseph of Arimathea_, 18
Juniper Hall, 85
Kaufmann, Angelica, 17
Keim, 61
_King Edward the Third_, 33
_King Edward and Queen Elinor_, 42
Klopstock's _Messiah_, 122
Landseer, 161
_Laocoon_, 179
Lavater, 50-4, 171
Law, William, 48, 165
Le Brun, 21
_Lenore_, Buerger's, 111
Linnell, John, 172, 173-5, 181
_Little Girl Found_, 103
_Little Girl Lost_, 103
_Little Tom the Sailor_, 119
Locke, John, 109
London, Bishop of, 29
Los, 75, 107, 108, 109, 139, 144, 194
Luke, St, 185
Luvah, 144
Lyca, 104
Lyttelton, Lord, 26, 29
Lytton, Bulwer, 82, 173, 178
Mackintosh, 89
Macpherson, 14, 15, 42
_Mad Song_, 33
Maimonides, 54
_Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, 75, 81, 176
Martin, Rev. John, 173, 176
Mathew, Mrs, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 39, 44, 119
Mathew, Rev. Henry, 29, 30, 32
Memory, 122, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 147
Mendelssohn, Moses, 54
Meyer, 115
Michael Angelo, 16, 17, 18, 21, 42, 44, 117, 126, 129, 139, 157, 158, 171
Milton, John, 44, 76, 105, 118, 123-4, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 151
_Milton_, 122, 124, 131, 132, 137-142, 152
Miniature Painting, 119, 120, 121, 125
Montagu, Mrs, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 35
Moore, George, 61, 178
More, Hannah, 28, 115
Morland, George, 173
_Morning_, or _Glad Day_, 22
Morris, Mr, 71
Mortimer, 42
Moses, 182, 183
Mulgrave, Lord, 29
Mulready, W., 172
Muses, the, 122
_My Silks and Fine Array_, 33
_Mysterious Mother_, 34
Mysticism, German, 68
Napoleon, 170
Narbonne, M. de, 85
Nature, 13, 125, 146, 149
_Nelly O'Brien_, 158
Newman, Cardinal, 176
Newton, Sir Isaac, 109
Nietzsche, 54, 133, 139, 140, 170, 190
_Night Thoughts_, Young's, 112
No Popery Riots, 23
North American States, 44
North End, Hampstead, 174, 176
Odin, 109
_On Homer's Poetry_, 179
_On Virgil_, 179, 180
Oothoon, 94-5
Opie, Mrs, 115
Oram, 30
Orc, 99, 100, 109, 110
Ord, Mrs, 28
_Ossian_, 14
Ossian, 105
Paine, Tom, 82, 86-8, 89, 93, 96, 98, 144, 145, 190
Palamabron, 109
Palmer, Samuel, 172, 175-6
Pantheism, 71, 72, 106, 107, 143
Pantheism, Hindoo, 191
Paracelsus, 23, 47, 58, 118, 172
_Paradise Lost_, 136
Parker, 39, 40
Pars, Mr, 15
Pascal, 28
Passion, 76, 77, 147-8
_Pastorals of Virgil_, 180
Paul, St, 134, 135, 140, 146, 181
Paulus, Dr, 61
_Pebble, the_, 154
_Penance of Jane Shore_, 42
Pepys, Sir Lucas, 29
Percy's _Reliques_, 14
Phillips, Captain, 29
Pilgrimage to Canterbury, 160-1
Piozzi, Mrs, 84
Plato, 109, 149, 152
_Poetical Sketches_, 33, 44
_Poison Tree_, 104
Pope, A., 114
Portland, Duchess of, 26
Price, Dr, 82
Priestley, Dr, 82, 87, 93
Proverbs of Hell, 76
Pythagoras, 109
Quakers, 174
Quintilian, 28
Radcliffe, Mrs, 34
Raphael, 16, 21, 42, 126, 157
Reign of Terror, 89, 100, 102, 117, 190
Rembrandt, 42, 158, 171
Renan, 61
Repression, 189-90, 191
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 118, 126, 156-9, 193
Reynolds' _Discourses_, 157-8, 193
Richmond, George, 176-7
_Rights of Man_, 88
Rintrah, 109
Ritson's _English Songs_, 44
Robinson, Crabb, 161, 177, 187
Romano, Julio, 16
Romney, 115, 116, 118, 119, 123, 124, 130
_Romney, Life of_, 130
Rose, Samuel, 127
Rotten Row, Hampstead, 174
Rousseau, 28, 36, 109, 145
Rowley, 14
Royal Academy, 21, 25
Rubens, 21, 42
Samson, Dr, 99
Satan, 76, 139, 183, 184, 186
Schiavonetti, Lewis, 155, 160
Schiavonetti, Niccolo, 160
_Schoolboy, the_, 104
Schweitzer, 61
Scott, Sir W., 14, 170
Seven Planes, 134
Seward, Anna, 115
Sex, 147-8
Shakespeare, 14, 26, 27, 33, 44, 76, 118, 132, 133
Sharpe, 123
Shelley, 71, 84, 95, 133, 172
Shields, F., 112
_Shipwreck_, after Romney, 130, 153
Skofield, 127
Smelt, Mr, 29
Smith, J. T., 30, 39
Socrates, 109
_Song of Liberty_, 93
_Song of Los_, 108
_Songs of Experience_, 70
_Songs of Innocence_, 69, 102, 103
Sotho, 109
Spencer, 31
Spencer's _Faery Queen_, 14
Stael, Madame de, 86
Stothard, 22, 24, 44, 112, 114, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 171
_Strange Story_, 173
Strauss, 61
Swedenborg, 30, 39, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55-80, 58, 59, 105, 110, 118, 137,
138, 143, 160, 187, 190, 191, 192, 194
Swinburne, 14, 33, 53
Symbolism, 136
Tabard Inn, 162
Talleyrand, 85
Tatham, F., 177
Tharmas, 144
_The Divine Image_, 69
_The Little Vagabond_, 71
_Thel_, 66-9
Thelwall, 86
Theosophy, 134
Theotormon, 94-5
Theresa, St, 23, 47, 50
Thomson, 14
Thornton, Dr, 180
_Thus Spake Zarathustra_, 190
_Tiger, the_, 193
Tiriel, 66, 67
Titian, 42, 172
Tolstoi, 193
Tooke, Horne, 86
Townshend, Charles, 87
Transcendence, 192
Trismegistus, 109
_Triumphs of Temper_, 114, 115, 121
Truchsess, Count, 129
Urizen, 66, 67, 75, 93, 99, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 139, 142, 144, 194
Varley, Cornelius, 173
Varley, John, 172-3, 174
Venetian art, 117
Venetian _finesse_, 125
Vesey, Mrs, 28
Vinci, Leonardo da, 129, 185
_Visions of the Daughters of Albion_, 94-5, 97
Voltaire, 28, 36, 109, 145
Wainewright, T. G., 177-8
Walpole, Horace, 26, 28, 34, 85
War, 34, 35, 43, 44
Warren, 96
Washington, 96
Water Colour Society, 172
Watson, Caroline, 130
Watteau, 129
Webster, 33
_Werther_, 28
Wesley, John, 23, 48, 49, 50, 66, 139, 140, 165
West, Sir Benjamin, 173
Whitefield, 23, 49, 50, 66, 139, 140, 145, 165
Wilberforce, 177
Wilde, Oscar, 178
Wilkinson, Garth, 53, 68, 71, 72
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 82, 84-6, 88, 89, 92, 190
Wood, Polly, 23
Woollett, 17, 18
Wordsworth, 13, 170
Yeats, W. B., 112, 132
Young, Edward, 112
_Zanoni_, 173
_Zoas, the Four_, 113, 124, 131, 142, 145, 182
Zophar, 184
_Printed in Great Britain by_
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
WOKING AND LONDON
Footnotes:
[1] This fact was first pointed out by Mr Laurence Binyon.
[2] _Jerusalem_, 72. 50-52.
[3] Prov. viii. 27-31.
[4] _Jerusalem_, 15. 61-69.
[5] Thirteenth Discourse.
[6] Genesis xlvi. 13.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors
have been silently closed while those requiring interpretation have
been left open.
The following misprints have been corrected:
"no" corrected to "not" (page 42)
"correponds" corrected to "corresponds" (page 56)
"Hesbeth" corrected to "Hesketh" (page 116)
Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling,
hyphenation, and period usage after abbreviations have been retained
from the original.