review (signed R. H.) of the _Blair's Grave_, sufficiently impudent in
manner and incapable in matter to have provoked a milder spirit than
Blake's. Fuseli's prefatory note is cited with a tone of dissentient
patronage not lightly to be endured; "none but such a visionary as Mr.
Blake or such a frantic (_sic_) as Mr. Fuseli could possibly fancy," and
so forth; then follows some chatter about the failures of great poets,
"utter impossibility of representing _Spirit_ to the eye" (except by means
of italic type), "insipid," "absurd," "all the wise men of the East would
not possibly divine," "_small_ assistance of the title" (italics again),
"how are we to find out?" (might not one reply with Thersites, "Make that
demand of thy Maker?"), "how absurd," "more serious censure," "most
heterogeneous and serio-fantastic," "most indecent," "appearance of
libidinousness," "much to admire, but more to censure," and all the
common-places of that pestilent old style which, propped on italics and
points of exclamation, halts at every sentence between a titter, a shrug,
and a snarl. Schiavonetti also "has done more than justice" to Blake, and
Blair and his engraver are finally bidden to divide the real palm. Who
this reviewer was, no man need either know or care; but all may now
understand the point of Blake's allusion. Next year however the real
batteries were opened. It is but loathsome labour to shovel out this
decomposed rubbish from the catacombs of liberal journalism; but if thus
only we can explain an apparently aimless or misplaced reference on the
great artist's part, it may be worth while to throw up a few spadefuls.
This second article bears date September 17th, 1809, No. 90 of the
_Examiner_, and is labelled "Mr. Blake's Exhibition." The contributor has
already lapsed from simple fatuity into fatuity compound with scurrility.
Blake here figures as "an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal
inoffensiveness secures him from confinement, and consequently of whom no
public notice would have been taken, if he was not" (the man's grammar
here goes mad on its own account, but what then?) "forced on the notice
and animadversion of the _Examiner_ in having been held up" (the case by
this time is fairly desperate) "to public admiration;" such is the
eccentricity of human error. The _Blair_ of last year "was a futile
endeavour _by_ bad drawings to represent immateriality _by_ bodily
personifications," and so forth; once again, "the tasteful hand of
Schiavonetti," one regrets to remember, was employed to bestow "an
exterior charm on deformity and nonsense. Thus encouraged, the poor man"
(to wit, Blake) "fancies himself a great master, and has painted a few
wretched pictures, some of which are"--any one may finish that for the
critic. The catalogue is "a farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness
(_sic_), and egregious vanity." Stothard and the irrepressible
Schiavonetti are of course held up in contrast to the "distempered brain"
which produced Blake's _Pilgrims_. The picture of _The Ancient Britons_
"is a complete caricature; the colour of the flesh is exactly like hung
beef." Here we will pull the man up short and have done with him. He
shirks a signature this time; and whether or no he were the same as last
year's critic, those may find out who care.
"Arcadiae pecuaria rudere dicas;" would not one say that this mingling bray
and howl had issued through the throat and nostril of some one among the
roving or browsing cattle of our own daily or weekly literature, startled
at smelling some incongruous rose in his half-eaten thistle-heap? Such
feeders were always one in voice and one in palate: it were waste of wood
and iron to cudgel or to prod them. Even when their clamour becomes too
intolerably dissonant we may get out of hearing and solace our vexed ears
and spirits with reflection on that axiom of Blake's, which, though
savouring in such a case of excessive optimism, we will strive to hope is
true:
"The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on Heaven's shore."
This was not Blake's only connexion or collision with the journals of his
day. An adverse notice of Fuseli had excited him to more direct reprisals
than the attack upon himself now did. The _Monthly Magazine_ for July 1st,
1806 (vol. xxi. pp. 520, 521), contains the following letter, which is now
first unearthed and seems worth saving. It is not without perversities;
neither is it wanting in vigour and fervour of thought.
"TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'MONTHLY MAGAZINE.'
"SIR,--My indignation was exceedingly moved at reading a criticism in
_Bell's Weekly Messenger_ (25th May) on the picture of Count Ugolino,
by Mr. Fuseli, in the Royal Academy Exhibition; and your magazine
being as extensive in its circulation as that paper, and as it also
must from its nature be more permanent, I take the advantageous
opportunity to counteract the widely-diffused malice which has for
many years, under the pretence of admiration of the arts, been
assiduously sown and planted among the English public against true
art, such as it existed in the days of Michael Angelo and Raphael.
Under pretence of fair criticism and candour, the most wretched taste
ever produced has been upheld for many, very many years; but now, I
say, now its end has come. Such an artist as Fuseli is invulnerable,
he needs not my defence; but I should be ashamed not to set my hand
and shoulder, and whole strength, against those wretches who, under
pretence of criticism, use the dagger and the poison.
"My criticism on this picture is as follows: 'Mr. Fuseli's Count
Ugolino is the father of sons of feeling and dignity, who would not
sit looking in their parent's face in the moments of his agony, but
would rather retire and die in secret while they suffer him to
indulge his passionate and innocent grief, his innocent and venerable
madness, and insanity, and fury, and whatever paltry cold-hearted
critics cannot, because they dare not, look upon. Fuseli's Count
Ugolino is a man of wonder and admiration, of resentment against man
and devil, and of humiliation before God: prayer and parental
affection fills the figure from head to foot. The child in his arms,
whether boy or girl signifies not (but the critic must be a fool who
has not read Dante, and who does not know a boy from a girl); I say,
the child is as beautifully drawn as it is coloured--in both,
inimitable; and the effect of the whole is truly sublime, on account
of that very colouring which our critic calls black and heavy. The
German-flute colour, which was used by the Flemings (they call it
burnt bone), has [? so] possessed the eye of certain connoisseurs,
that they cannot see appropriate colouring, and are blind to the
gloom of a real terror.
"The taste of English amateurs has been too much formed upon pictures
imported from Flanders and Holland, consequently our countrymen are
easily brow-beat on the subject of painting; and hence it is so
common to hear a man say, 'I am no judge of pictures;' but, O
Englishmen! know that every man ought to be a judge of pictures, and
every man is so who has not been connoisseured out of his senses.
"A gentleman who visited me the other day said, 'I am very much
surprised at the dislike which some connoisseurs show on viewing the
pictures of Mr. Fuseli; but the truth is, he is a hundred years
beyond the present generation.' Though I am startled at such an
assertion, I hope the contemporary taste will shorten the hundred
years into as many hours; for I am sure that any person consulting
his own eyes must prefer what is so supereminent; and I am as sure
that any person consulting his own reputation, or the reputation of
his country, will refrain from disgracing either by such ill-judged
criticisms in future.
"Yours, WM. BLAKE."
This ready championship, erratic and excessive as it may be, is not less
characteristic of the man than is that outspoken violence which helped to
make his audience often deaf and unfriendly. The letter, as we said, did
not happen to turn up in time for insertion in any niche of the _Life_ or
_Appendix_: it will not seem a valueless windfall if read by the light of
the Catalogue, the Address, and other notes on art embalmed in the second
volume.
No part of Blake's life was nobler in action or is yet worthier of study
than the period of neglected labour and unbroken poverty which followed.
Much of the work done is now, it appears, irretrievably lost. New friends
gathered about him as the old ones died out; for indeed all men capable of
seeing the beauty of greatness and goodness were drawn at once to such a
man as he was. Violent and petulant as he may have seemed on some rare
occasions of public protest, he endured all the secret slights and wants
of his latter life with a most high patience, and with serene if not
joyous acceptance of his fate. Without brute resignation, nay with keen
sense of neglect shown and wrong done, he yet laboured gladly and without
ceasing. Sick or well, he was at work; his utmost rest was mere change of
labour. To relax the intense nerve or deaden the travailing brain would
have been painful and grievous to him. Fervent incessant action was to him
as the breath of every moment, the bread of every day. His talk was eager
and eloquent; his habits of life were simple and noble, alike above
compassion and beyond regret. To all the poor about him--and among the
poor he had to live out all his latter days of life--he showed all the
supreme charities of courtesy. From one or two things narrated of him, we
may all see and be assured that a more perfect and gentle excellence of
manner, a more royal civility of spirit, was never found in any man.
Fearless, blameless, and laborious, he had also all tender and exquisite
qualities of breeding, all courteous and gracious instincts of kindness.
As there was nothing base in him, so was there nothing harsh or weak. This
old man, whose hand academicians would not take because he had to fetch
his own porter, had the habit and spirit of the highest training. He was
born a knight and king among men, and had the great and quiet way of such.
To say that he was not ashamed or afraid of his poverty seems an
expression actually libellous by dint of inadequacy. Fear and shame of any
base kind are inconceivable of him. The great and sleepless soul which
impelled him to work and to speak could take no taint and no rest in this
world. Conscious as he was of the glory of his gift and capacity, he was
apparently unconscious how noble a thing was his own life. The work which
he was able and compelled to perform he knew to be great; that his manner
of living should be what it was, he seems to have thought but simple.
"Few," his biographer has well said, "are so persistently brave." But his
was the supreme valour which ignorantly assumes and accepts itself. It was
natural to him not to cease from doing well or complain of faring ill, as
it is natural to a soldier not to turn tail. That he should do great
things for small wages was a condition of his life. Neither, with all his
just and distinct self-assertion, did he assume any special credit for
this. He did not ask for more of meat and drink, more of leisure or
praise; he demanded only such recognition as might have enabled him to do
more work and greater while strength and sight were left in him. That
neglect, and the necessities of mere handiwork involved by neglect, should
thus shorten his time and impair his capacity for higher labours, he did
at times complain, not without an audible undertone of scornful and
passionate rebuke. "Let not that nation," he says once, "where less than
nobility is the 'reward,' pretend that Art is encouraged by that nation."
There was no angry prurience for fame or gold underlying such complaints.
His famous drawings, burlesque or serious, of visionary heads are
interesting chiefly for the evidence they give of Blake's power upon his
own mind and nerves, and of the strong and subtle mixture of passion with
humour in his temperament. Faith, invention, and irony are here mingled in
a rare and curious manner. The narrow leer of stolid servile vigour, the
keen smirk of satisfied and brutish achievement, branded upon the
grotesque face of the "Man who built the Pyramids," implies a good satire
on workmen of base talent and mean success. Several others, such as "The
Accusers" and the celebrated "Ghost of a Flea," are grotesque almost to
grandeur, and full of strength and significance. More important than
hundreds of these are the beautiful designs to Virgil--or to Phillips.
Reproduced at page 271 of Vol. I. with the utmost care and skill, they
have of course lost something by the way; enough remains, and would remain
had less favour been shown them, to give great and keen pleasure. In the
first, the remote sweet curve of hill against a sky filled with evening,
seen far above the rows of folded sheep, may recall a splendid former
design in the "Blair." In the second, which perhaps has lost more than any
in course of transference, the distance of winding road and deepening
gorge, woods and downs and lighted windy sky, is among the noblest
inventions of imaginative landscape. Highest of all in poetical quality I
should class the third design. Upon the first two, symbolic as they are of
vision and of pilgrimage, the shadow of peace is cast like a garment; rest
lies upon them as a covering. In the third, a splendour of sweet and
turbulent moonlight falls across blown bowed hedgerows, over the gnarled
and labouring branches of a tough tortuous oak, upon soft ears of laid
corn like long low waves without ripple or roll; every bruised blade
distinct and patient, every leaf quivering and straightened out in the
hard wind. The stormy beauty of this design, the noble motion and passion
in all parts of it, are as noticeable as its tender sense of detail and
grace in effect of light. Not a star shows about the moon; and the dark
hollow half of her glimmering shell, emptied and eclipsed, is faint upon
the deep air. The fire in her crescent burns high across the drift of
wind. Blake's touch in this appears to me curiously just and perfect; the
moon does not seem to quail or flicker as a star would; but one may feel
and see, as it were, the wind passing beneath her; amid the fierce
fluctuation of heaven in the full breath of tempest, blown upon with all
the strength of the night, she stands firm in the race of winds, where no
lesser star can stand; she hangs high in clear space, pure of cloud; but
no likeness of the low-hung labouring moon, no blurred and blinking planet
with edges blotted and soiled in fitful vapour, would have given so
splendid a sense of storm as this white triumphal light seen above the
wind. Small and rough as these half-engraved designs may be, it is
difficult to express in words all that is latent, even all that is
evident, in the best of them. Poets and painters of Blake's kind can put
enough into the slightest and swiftest work they do to baffle critics and
irritate pretenders.
Friends, as we have said, were not wanting to Blake in his old age; to one
of them we owe, among other more direct obligations, an inestimable debt
for the "Illustrations to Job," executed on his commission. Another worthy
of notice here was, until our own day called forth a better, the best
English critic on art; himself, as far as we know, admirable alike as a
painter, a writer, and a murderer. In each pursuit, perhaps, there was a
certain want of solid worth and fervour, which at times impeded or
impaired the working of an excellent faculty; but in each it is evident
there was a noble sense of things fair and fit; a seemliness and
shapeliness of execution, a sensitive relish of excellence, an exquisite
aspiration after goodness of work, which cannot be overpraised. With pen,
with palette, or with poison, his hand was never a mere craftsman's. The
visible vulgarities and deficiencies of his style went hardly deeper than
the surface. Excess of colour and levity of handling have not unjustly
been charged against him; he does not seem to have always used the
material on hand, whether strychnine or mere ink, to the best purpose; his
work has a certain crudity and violence of tone; his articles and his
crimes are both too often wanting in the most delightful qualities of
which finished art is capable; qualities which a more earnest man of
lesser genius might have given them. The main object in both seems wrong,
or at best insufficient; in the one case he looked less to achievement
than to effect; in the other he aimed rather at money-getting than at
enjoyment; which is the more deplorable, as a man so greatly gifted must
have been in every way fitted to apprehend, to relish, and to realize all
noble and subtle pleasure in its more vigorous forms and in its more
delicate sense. What he has done however is excellent; and we need not
inquire with a captious ingratitude whether another could have done
better: that meaner men have since done worse, we know and lament. Too
often the murderer is not an artist; and the converse defect is no doubt
yet more unhappily frequent. On all accounts we may suppose that in days
perhaps not remote a philosophic posterity, mindful that the harvest of
art has few reapers worthy of their hire, and well aware that what is
exalted must also be exceptional, will inscribe with due honour upon the
list of men who have deserved well of mankind the name of Wainwright.
Those who would depreciate his performance as a simple author must
recollect that in accordance with the modern receipt he "lived his poems;"
that the age prefers deeds to songs; that to do great things is better
than to write; that action is of eternity, fiction of time; and that these
poems were doubtless the greater for being "inarticulate." Remembering
which things, the sternest critic will not deny that no kaiser or king
ever "polished his stanza" to better purpose with more strenuous will.
What concerns us at present is, that there grew up between Blake and
Wainwright an intimacy not unpleasing to commemorate. An artist in words,
in oils, and in drugs, Wainwright had an exquisite power of recognition,
and a really noble relish of all excellence. No good work came in his way
but he praised it with all his might. The mixture of keen insight with
frank pleasure, innate justice of eye with fresh effusion of enjoyment,
gives to his papers on art a special colour or savour which redeems the
offences of a tricked and tinselled style. Clearly too he did what he
could for Blake in the way of journalism; but a super-editorial thickness
of hide and head repelled the light sharp shafts loosed from a bow too
relaxed by too unsteady a hand. It is lamentable that the backstroke of a
recalcitrant hoof should have broken this bowman's arm when it might have
done good service. Help shown to Blake about this time, especially help of
the swift efficient nature that Wainwright would have given, might have
been infinitely important; it was no light thing to come so near and yet
fall short of. Exposition of the beloved "Song of Jerusalem," adequate at
least on the side of pure art, would assuredly have given the great old
man pleasure beyond words and beyond gold. This too he was not to have.
There are men set about the ways of life who seem made only to fulfil the
office of thorns; it is difficult for retrospection to observe that they
have done anything but hurt and hinder the feet of higher men. Doubtless
they have had their use and taken their pleasure. These have left no
trace; we can still see the scars they made on the hand and the fragments
they rent from the cloak of a great man as he passed by them. A little of
the honour which he has lately received would have been to Blake in his
life a great and pleasant thing to attain; praise of his work now leaves
an after-taste of bitterness on the lips which utter it. His work, not
done for wages, hardly repaid with thanks, we can touch and handle and
remark upon as ability is given us; "nothing can touch him further." Those
who might have done what we would give much to do left it undone. And even
to men who enjoy such power to do and such wisdom to choose greatly as
were the inheritance of Blake it is not a thing worth no regret to have
been allowed upon earth no comprehension and no applause. He had a better
part in life than the pleasure that comes of such things; but these also
he might have had. He would not come down to chaffer for them or stoop to
gather them up from unclean or unsafe ground; but they might have been
laid at his feet freely and with thanks; which they never were.
Foiled as he had been in his good purpose, the critic at least won full
gratitude from the gentle and great nature of his friend, who repaid him
in a kingly manner with praise worth gold. One may hope that a picture
painted by Wainwright and commended by Blake will yet be traced somewhere,
in spite of the singular fate which hung upon so much of their lives, and
which still obscures so much of their work. At least its subject and
quality should be sought out and remembered. But for the strange collision
with social laws which broke up his life and scattered his designs, it
might also be hoped that some other relics of Wainwright would be found
adrift in manuscript or otherwise, and a collection of his stray works be
completed and published, with an adequate notice of his life, well weeded
of superfluous lamentations, duly qualified to put an end to perversion
and foolish fancies, clear of deprecation or distortion, just, sufficient,
and close to the purpose. Few things would be better worth doing by a
competent editor.
Even of the "Inventions to the Book of Job," as far as I know, no especial
notice was taken. Upon these, the greatest of all Blake's designs, such
noble exposition has now at length been bestowed that further remark may
henceforward well be spared. This commentary has something of the stately
beauty and vigorous gravity of style which distinguish the work spoken of.
Blake himself, had he undertaken to write notes on his designs, must have
done them less justice than this. The perfect apprehension and the perfect
representation of the great qualities which all men, according to their
capacity, must here in some degree perceive, give to these notes a value
beyond that of mere eloquence or of mere sympathy. The words chosen do not
merely render the subject with fluency and fitness; they attain a
choiceness and exaltation of expression, which give to the writing much of
the character of the designs. Whether or not from any exceptional aptitude
in the material, these designs are more lucid and dramatic in effect than
perhaps any of Blake's works. His specialties of belief or sentiment
hardly show in this series at all; except perhaps in the passionate and
penitent character which seems here to supplant the traditional divine
look of patience and power. The whole work has in it a vibration as of
fire; even the full stars and serene lines of hill are set in frameworks
of fervent sky or throbbing flame. But for the most part those intense
qualities of sleepless invention which in many of Blake's other works
impel him into fierce aberration and blind ecstasy, through ways which few
can tread and mists which few can pierce, are now happily diverted and
kept at work upon the exquisite borders and appendages. In these there is
enough of fiery fancy and tender structure of symbol to employ the whole
wide and vivid imagination of the artist. And throughout the series there
is a largeness and a loftiness of manner which sustain the composition at
the height of the poem. In the highest flights of spiritual passion and
speculation, in the subtle contention with fate and imperious agony of
appeal against heaven, Blake has matched himself against his text, and
translated its sharp and profound harmonies into a music of design not
less adorable.