changed, he who created it has power till the end; appearances and
relations he can alter, and turn a virgin to a harlot; but not change one
individual life to another, reverse or rescind the laws of personality.
Virtue and vice, chastity and unchastity, are changeable and perishable;
"they all shall wax old as doth a garment:" but the underlying individual
life is imperishable and intangible. All qualities proper to human nature
are inventions of the Accuser; not so the immortal prenatal nature, which
is the essence of every man severally from eternity. That lies beyond the
dominion of the God of this world; he is but the Son of Morning, that
having once risen, will set again; shining only in the darkness of
spiritual night; his light is but a light seen in dreams before the dawn
by men belated and misled, which shall pass away and be known no more at
the advent of the perfect day.
All these mystical heresies may seem turbid and chaotic; but the legend or
subject-matter of the present book is transparent as water, lucid as
flame, compared to much of Blake's subsequent work. The designs, even if
taken apart from their significance, are among his most inventive and
interesting. They were done "for children," because, in Blake's mind, the
wise innocence of children was likeliest to appreciate and accept the
message involved in them; "for the sexes," that they might be at once
enlightened to see beyond themselves, and enfranchised from the bondage of
pietism or materialism. Interpreted according to Blake's intention, the
book was a small leaf or chapter of the inspired gospel of deliverance
which he was charged to preach through the organs of his art; a gospel not
easily to be made acceptable or comprehensible.
Of the prophetic books produced about this time we shall not as yet speak;
nor have we much to say of the next set of designs, those illustrative of
"Young's Night Thoughts," which were done, as will be surmised, on
commission. Power, invention, and a certain share of beauty, these designs
of course have; but less, as it seems to me, of Blake's great qualities
and more of his faults or errors than usual. That the text which serves as
a peg to hang them on, or a finger-post to point them out, is itself a
thing dead and rotten, does not suffice to explain this; for Blake could
do admirable work by way of illustration to the verse of Hayley.
This name brings us to a new and singular division of our present task.
During the four important years of Blake's residence at Felpham we can
trace his doings and feelings with some fulness and with some confidence.
They were probably no busier than other years of his life; but by a happy
accident we hear more concerning the sort of labour done. In August 1800
Blake moved out of London for the first time; he returned "early in 1804."
Hayley's patronage of Blake is a piece of high comedy perfect in its way.
The first act or two were played out with sufficient liking on either
side. "Mr. Hayley acts like a prince" towards "his good Blake," not it
seems in the direct way of pecuniary gifts or loans, but in such smaller
attentions as he could easily show to the husband and wife on their first
arrival close at hand. It must be remarked and remembered that throughout
this curious and incongruous intercourse there is no question whatever of
obligation on Blake's part for any kindness shown beyond the equal offices
of friend to friend. It is for "Mr. Hayley's usual brotherly affection"
that he expresses such ready gratitude. That the poor man's goodwill was
genuine we need not hesitate to allow; but the fates never indulged in a
freak of stranger humour than when it seemed good to their supreme caprice
to couple in the same traces for even the shortest stage a man like Hayley
with a man like Blake, and bracket the "Triumphs of Temper" with the
"Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
England, with a deplorable ingratitude, has apparently forgotten by this
time what her Hayley was once like. It requires a certain strength of
imagination to realise the assured fact that he was once a "greatest
living poet;" retrospection collapses in the effort, and credulity loses
heart to believe. Such, however, was in effect his profession; he had the
witness of his age under hand and seal to the fact, that on the death of
his friend Cowper the supreme laurels of the age or day had fallen by
inheritance to that poet's accomplished and ingenious biographer. There is
something pathetic and almost piteous in his perfect complacency and his
perfect futility. A moral country should not have forgotten that to Mr.
Hayley, when at work on his chief poem, "it seemed to be a kind of duty
incumbent on those who devote themselves to poetry to render a powerful
and too often a perverted art as beneficial to life and manners as the
limits of composition and the character of modern times will allow."
Although the ages, he regretted to reflect, were past, in which poetry was
idolized for _miraculous effects_, yet a poem intended to promote the
cultivation of good humour, and designed to unite the special graces of
Ariosto, of Dante, and of Pope, might still be of service to society; or,
he added with a chaste and noble modesty, "if this may be thought too
chimerical and romantic by sober reason, it is at least one of those
pleasing and innocent illusions in which a poetical enthusiast may be
safely indulged;" who will deny it?
This was the patron to whom Flaxman introduced Blake as an available
engraver, and, on occasion, a commendable designer. Hayley was ready
enough to cage and exhibit among the flock of tame geese which composed
his troop of swans this bird of foreign feather; and until the eagle's
beak and claws came into play under sharp provocation, the Felpham coop
and farmyard were duly dignified by his presence and behaviour as a "tame
villatic fowl." The master bantam-cock of the hen-roost in person
fluttered and cackled round him with assiduous if perplexed patronage. But
of such alliances nothing could come in the end but that which did come.
"Mr. H.," writes Blake in July 1803 to Mr. Butts, his one purchaser (on
the scale of a guinea per picture), "approves of my designs as little as
he does of my poems. I have been forced to insist on his leaving me, in
both, to my own self-will; for I am determined to be no longer pestered
with his genteel ignorance and polite disapprobation. His imbecile
attempts to depress me only deserve laughter." Let a compassionate amateur
of human poultry imagine what confusion must by this time have been
reigning in the poor hen-roost and dove-cote of Eartham! Things, however,
took some time in reaching the tragic pitch of these shrill discords. For
months or years they appear to have run through various scales of very
tolerable harmony. Blake, in the intervals of incessant engraving and
occasional designing, was led by his good Hayley into the greenest
pastures of literature and beside the stillest waters of verse; he was
solicited to help in softening and arranging for public inspection the
horrible and pitiful narrative of Cowper's life; he was prevailed upon to
listen while Hayley "read Klopstock into English to Blake," with what
result one may trust he never knew. For it was probably under the sting of
this infliction that Blake scratched down in pencil a brief lyrical satire
on the German Milton, which modern humanity would refuse to read in public
if transcribed; although or because it might be, for grotesque case and
ringing breadth of melodious extravagance, a scrap saved from some
tattered chorus of Aristophanes, or caught up by Rabelais as the fragment
of a litany at the shrine of the _Dive Bouteille_. Let any man judge, from
the ragged shred we can afford to show by way of sample, how a sight or
handling of the stuff would have affected Hayley;
"The moon at that sight blushed scarlet red,
The stars threw down their cups and fled,
And all the devils that were in hell
Answered with a ninefold yell.
Klopstock felt the intripled turn,
And all his bowels began to churn;
And his bowels turned round three times three,
And locked in his soul with a ninefold key;
* * * * *
Then again old Nobodaddy swore
He never had seen such a thing before
Since Noah was shut in the ark,
Since Eve first chose her hell-fire spark,
Since 'twas the fashion to go naked,
Since the old Anything was created;
And * * * "
Only in choice Attic or in archaic French could the rest be endured by
modern eyes; but Panurge could hardly have improved on the manner of
retribution devised for flaccid fluency and devout sentiment always
running at the mouth.
For the rest, when out of the shadow of Klopstock or Cowper, Blake had
enough serious work on hand. His designs for various ballads of Hayley's,
strays of sick verse long since decomposed, were admirable enough to
warrant a hope of general admiration. This they failed of; but Blake's
head and hands were full of other work. "Miniature," he writes to Mr.
Butts, "is become a goddess in my eyes." He did not serve her long; but
while his faith in her godhead lasted he seems to have officiated with
some ardour in the courts of her temple. He speaks of orders multiplying
upon him, of especial praise received for proficiency in this style of
work; not, we may suppose, from any who had much authority to praise or
dispraise. It is impossible to imagine that Hayley knew a really great
work of Blake's when he saw it; a clever comminution of great power must
have seemed to him the worthiest use of it; whereas the design and the
glory of Blake was to concentrate and elevate his talent: all he did and
all he touched with profit has an air and a savour of greatness. In
miniature and such things he must probably have worked with half his heart
and less than half his native skill or strength of eye and hand.
There is a certain pathos in the changes of tone which come one by one
over Blake's correspondence at this time. All at first is sunlit and
rose-coloured. "The villagers are not mere rustics; they are polite and
modest. Meat is cheaper than in London; but the sweet air and the voices
of winds, trees, and birds, and the odours of the happy ground, make it a
dwelling for immortals." This intense and eager pleasure in the freshness
of things, this sharp relish of beauty in all the senses, which must needs
run over and lapse into sudden musical expression, will recall the
passages in Shelley's letters where some delight of sound or sight
suddenly felt or remembered forces its way into speech, and makes music of
the subservient words. "Work will go on here with God-speed. A roller and
two harrows lie before my window." This passion for hints and types,
common to all men of highly toned nerves and rapid reflectiveness of
spirit, was not with Blake a matter of fugitive impulse or casual
occasion. In his quietest moods of mind, in his soberest tempers of fancy,
he was always at some such work. At this time, too, he was living at a
higher strain of the senses than usual. So sudden a change of air and
change of world as had come upon him filled his nerves and brain at every
entrance with keen influences of childlike and sensitive satisfaction.
Witness his first sweet and singular verses to Flaxman and to Butts--"such
as Felpham produces by me, though not such as she produces by her eldest
son," he remarks, with some reason; that eldest son and heir of every Muse
being her good Hayley. Witness too the simple and complete pleasure with
which he writes invitations and descriptions, transcribes visions and
experiences. Probably too in some measure, could we trace the perfect
relation of flesh with spirit and blood with brain, we should find that
this first daily communion with the sea wrought upon him at once within
and without; that the sharp sweetness of the salted air was not without
swift and pungent effect; that the hourly physical delight lavished upon
every sense by all tunes and odours and changes and colours of the
sea--the delight of every breath or sound or shadow or whisper passing
upon it--may have served at first to satiate as well as to stimulate,
before the pressure of enjoyment grew too intense and the sting of
enjoyment too keen. Upon Blake, of all men, one may conjecture that these
influences of spirit and sense would act with exquisite force. It is
observable that now, and not before, we hear of visions making manifest to
him the spiritual likeness of dead men: that the scene of every such
apocalypse was a sea-beach; the shore of a new Patmos, prolific as was the
first of splendid and enormous fancies, of dreams begotten and brought
forth in a like atmosphere and habit of mind.[3] Now too the illimitable
book of divine or daemonic revelation called "Jerusalem" was dictated by
inspiration of its authors, who "are in eternity:" Blake "dares not
pretend to be any other than the secretary." Human readers, if such indeed
exist beyond the singular or the dual number, will wish that the authors
had put themselves through a previous course of surgical or any other
training which might have cured a certain superhuman impediment of speech,
very perplexing to the mundane ear; a habit of huge breathless stuttering,
as it were a Titanic stammer, intolerable to organs of flesh. "Allegory,"
the too obedient secretary writes to his friend, "addressed to the
intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal
understanding, is my definition of the most sublime poetry." A better
perhaps could not be given; as far that is as relates to the "spirit of
sense" which is to be clothed in the beautiful body of verse; but when
once we have granted the power of conception, the claims of form are to be
first thought of. It is of small moment how the work thus done may strike
the heavy ear of vulgarity or affect the torpid palate of prurience;
against mere indolence or mere misconstruction it is waste of time to
contrive precautions or rear defences; but the laws and the dues of art it
is never permissible to forget. It is in fact only by innate and
irrational perception that we can apprehend and enjoy the supreme works of
verse and colour; these, as Blake indicates with a noble accuracy, are not
things of the understanding; otherwise, we may add, the whole human world
would appreciate them alike or nearly alike, and the high and subtle
luxuries of exceptional temperaments would be made the daily bread of the
poor and hungry; the _vinum daemonum_ which now the few only can digest
safely and relish ardently would be found medicinal instead of poisonous,
palatable instead of loathsome, by the run of eaters and drinkers; all
specialties of spiritual office would be abolished, and the whole
congregation would communicate in both kinds. All the more, meantime,
because this "bread of sweet thought and wine of delight" is not broken or
shed for all, but for a few only--because the sacramental elements of art
and poetry are in no wise given for the sustenance or the salvation of men
in general, but reserved mainly for the sublime profit and intense
pleasure of an elect body or church--all the more on that account should
the ministering official be careful that the paten and chalice be found
wanting in no one possible grace of work or perfection of material.
That too much of Blake's written work while at Felpham is wanting in
executive quality, and even in decent coherence of verbal dress, is
undeniable. The Pythoness who delivers these stormy and sonorous oracles
is at once exposed and hampered as it were by her loose and heavy raiment;
the prophetic robe here slips or gapes, there muffles and impedes; is now
a tatter that hardly hides the contorted limbs, and now an encumbrance
that catches or trips up the reeling feet. Everything now written in the
fitful impatient intervals of the day's work bears the stamp of an
overheated brain and of nerves too intensely strung. Everything may well
appear to confirm the suggestion that, as high latitudes and climates of
rarefied air affect the physical structure of inhabitants or travellers,
so in this case did the sudden country life, the taste and savour of the
sea, touch sharply and irritate deliciously the more susceptible and
intricate organs of mind and nature. How far such passive capacity of
excitement differs from insanity; how in effect a temperament so sensuous,
so receptive, and so passionate, is further off from any risk of turning
unsound than hardier natures carrying heavier weight and tougher in the
nerves; need scarcely be indicated. For the rest, our concern at present
shall still be mainly with the letters of this date; and by their light we
may be enabled to see light shed upon many things hitherto hopelessly
dark. As no other samples of Blake's correspondence worth mention have
been allowed us by the jealousy of fate and divine parsimony, we must be
duly grateful and careful in dealing with all we have; gathering the
fragments into commodious baskets, and piecing the shreds into available
patchwork.
These letters bear upon them the common stamp of all Blake's doings and
writings; the fiery and lyrical tone of mind and speech, the passionate
singleness of aim, the heat and flame of faith in himself, the violence of
mere words, the lust of paradox, the loud and angry habits of expression
which abound in his critical or didactic work, are not here missing;
neither are clear indications wanting of his noblest qualities; the great
love of great things, the great scorn of small men, the strong tenderness
of heart, the tender strength of spirit, which won for him honour from all
that were honourable. Ready even in a too fervent manner to accept, to
praise, to believe in worth and return thanks for it, he will have no man
or thing impede or divert him, either for love's sake or hate's. Small
friends with feeble counsels to suggest must learn to suppress their
small feelings and graceful regrets, or be cleared out of his way with all
their powers to help or hinder; lucky if they get off without some label
of epigram on the forehead or sting of epigram in the flesh. Upon Hayley,
as we may see by collation of Blake's note-book with his letters, the lash
fell at last, after long toleration of things intolerable, after "great
objections to my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business," (as
for instance engraving illustrations to Hayley's poems designed by
Flaxman's sister--not by his wife, as stated at p. 171 of the "Life" by
some momentary slip of a most careful pen), "and intimations that if I do
not confine myself to this I shall not live. This," adds Blake, "has
always pursued me. You will understand by this the source of all my
uneasiness. This from Johnson and Fuseli brought me down here, and this
from Mr. H. will bring me back again." In a sharper mood than this, he
appended to the decent skirts of Mr. Hayley one of the best burlesque
epigrams in the language:--
"Of Hayley's birth this was the happy lot:
His mother on his father him begot."
With this couplet tied to his tail, the ghost of Hayley may perhaps run
further than his own strength of wind or speed of foot would naturally
have carried him: with this hook in his nose, he may be led by "his good
Blake" some way towards the temple of memory.
What is most to be regretted in these letters is the wonderful tone of
assertion respecting the writer's own pictures and those of the great
Italian schools. This it would be difficult enough to explain, dishonest
to overlook, easy to ridicule, and unprofitable to rebuke. All that need
be said of this singular habit of Blake's has been said with admirable
clearness and fairness in the prefatory note to the prose selections in
Vol. II. Higher authority than the writer's of that note no man can have
or can require. And as Blake's artistic heresies are in fact mere
accidents--the illegitimate growth of chance and circumstance--we may be
content to leave them wholly to the practical judgment and the wise
charity of such artists as are qualified to pass sentence upon the
achievements and the shortcomings of this great artist. Their praise can
alone be thoroughly worth having; their blame can alone be of any
significance: and in no other hands than theirs may we safely leave the
memory and the glory of a fellow-labourer so illustrious as Blake.
Other points and shades of character not less singular it is essential
here to take notice of. These are not matters of accident, like the errors
of opinion or perversities of expression which may distort or disfigure
the notes and studies on purely artistic matters; they compose the vital
element and working condition of Blake's talent. From the fifth to the
tenth letter especially, it becomes evident that the writer was passing
through strange struggles of spirit and passionate stages of faith. As
early as the fourth letter, dated almost exactly a year later than the
first written on his arrival at Felpham, Blake refers in a tone of regret
and perplexity to the "abstract folly" which makes him incapable of direct
practical work, though not of earnest and continuous labour. This action
of the nerves or of the mind he was plainly unable to regulate or modify.
It hurries him while yet at work into "lands of abstraction;" he "takes
the world with him in his flight." Distress he knows would make the world
heavier to him, which seems now "lighter than a ball of wool rolled by the
wind;" and this distress material philosophies or methodical regulations
would "prescribe as a medicinal potion" for a mind impaired or diseased
merely by the animal superflux of spirits and childlike excess of
spiritual health. But this medicine the strange and strong faculty of
faith innate in the man precludes him from taking. Physical distress "is
his mock and scorn; mental no man can give; and if Heaven inflicts it, all
such distress is a mercy." It is not easy, but it is requisite, to realise
the perpetual freshness and fulness of belief, the inalterable vigour and
fervour of spirit with which Blake, heretic and mystic as he may have
been, worshipped and worked; by which he was throughout life possessed and
pursued. Above all gods or daemons of creation and division, he beheld by
faith in a perfect man a supreme God. "Though I have been very unhappy, I
am so no longer. I am again emerged into the light of day; I still (and
shall to eternity) embrace Christianity, and adore Him who is the express
image of God." In the light of his especial faith all visible things were
fused into the intense heat and sharpened into the keen outline of vision.
He walked and laboured under other heavens, on another earth, than the
earth and the heaven of material life:
"With a blue sky spread over with wings,
And a mild sun that mounts and sings;
With trees and fields full of fairy elves
And little devils who fight for themselves;
With angels planted in hawthorn bowers,
And God Himself in the passing hours."