the mixing of the gall with the blood." It may be worth remark, that one
brief notice at least of Blake's death made its way into print; the
"Literary Gazette" (No. 552; the "Gentleman's Magazine" published it in
briefer form but nearly identical words as far as it went) of August 18,
1827, saw fit to "record the death of a singular and very able man," in an
article contributed mainly by "the kindness of a correspondent," who
speaks as an acquaintance of Blake, and gives this account of his last
days, prefaced by a sufficiently humble reference to the authorities of
Fuseli, Flaxman, and Lawrence. "Pent, with his affectionate wife, in a
close back-room in one of the Strand courts, his bed in one corner, his
meagre dinner in another, a ricketty table holding his copper-plates in
progress, his colours, books (among which his Bible, a Sessi Velutello's
Dante, and Mr. Carey's translation, were at the top), his large drawings,
sketches, and MSS.; his ankles frightfully swelled, his chest disordered,
old age striding on, his wants increased, but not his miserable means and
appliances; even yet was his eye undimmed, the fire of his imagination
unquenched, and the preternatural never-resting activity of his mind
unflagging. He had not merely a calmly resigned, but a cheerful and
mirthful countenance. He took no thought for his life, what he should eat
or what he should drink; nor yet for his body, what he should put on; but
had a fearless confidence in that Providence which had given him the vast
range of the world for his recreation and delight. Blake died last Monday;
died as he had lived, piously, cheerfully, talking calmly, and finally
resigning himself to his eternal rest like an infant to its sleep. He has
left nothing except some pictures, copper-plates, and his principal work,
a series of a hundred large designs from Dante.... He was active" (the
good correspondent adds, further on) "in mind and body, passing from one
occupation to another without an intervening minute of repose. Of an
ardent, affectionate, and grateful temper, he was simple in manner and
address, and displayed an inbred courteousness of the most agreeable
character." Finally, the writer has no doubt that Mrs. Blake's "cause will
be taken up by the distributors of those funds which are raised for the
relief of distressed artists, and also by the benevolence of private
individuals": for she "is left (we fear, from the accounts which have
reached us) in a very forlorn condition, Mr. Blake himself having been
much indebted for succour and consolation to his friend Mr. Linnell the
painter." The discreet editor, "when further time has been allowed him for
inquiry, will probably resume the matter:" but, we may now more safely
prophesy, assuredly will not.
[11] Of course, there can be no question here of bad art: which indeed is
a non-entity or contradiction in terms, as to speak of good art is to run
into tautology. It is assumed, to begin with, that the artist has
something to say or do worth doing or saying in an artistic form.
[12] Observe especially in Chaucer's most beautiful of young poems that
appalling passage, where, turning the favourite edgetool of religious
menace back with point inverted upon those who forged it, the poet
represents men and women of religious habit or life as punished in the
next world, beholding afar off with jealous regret the salvation and
happiness of Venus and all her servants (converse of the Hoersel legend,
which shows the religious or anti-Satanic view of the matter; though there
too there is some pity or sympathy implied for the pagan side of things,
revealing in the tradition the presence and touch of some poet): expressly
punished, these monks and nuns, for their continence and holiness of life,
and compelled after death to an eternity of fruitless repentance for
having wilfully missed of pleasure and made light of indulgence in this
world; which is perfect Albigeois. Compare the famous speech in _Aucassin
et Nicolette_, where the typical hero weighs in a judicial manner the
respective attractions of heaven and hell; deciding of course dead against
the former on account of the deplorably bad company kept there; priests,
hermits, saints, and such-like, in lieu of knights and ladies, painters
and poets. One may remark also, the minute this pagan revival begins to
get breathing-room, how there breaks at once into flower a most passionate
and tender worship of nature, whether as shown in the bodily beauty of man
and woman or in the outside loveliness of leaf and grass; both Chaucer and
his anonymous southern colleague being throughout careful to decorate
their work with the most delicate and splendid studies of colour and form.
Either of the two choice morsels of doctrinal morality cited above would
have exquisitely suited the palate of Blake. He in his time, one need not
doubt, was considerably worried and gibbered at by "monkeys in houses of
brick," moral theorists, and "pantopragmatic" men of all sorts; what can
we suppose he would have said or done in an epoch given over to preachers
(lay, clerical, and mixed) who assert without fear or shame that you may
demand, nay are bound to demand, of a picture or poem what message it has
for you, what may be its moral utility or material worth? "Poetry must
conform itself to" &c.; "art must have a mission and meaning appreciable
by earnest men in an age of work," and so forth. These be thy gods, O
Philistia.
[13] I will not resist the temptation to write a brief word of comment on
this passage. While my words of inadequate and now of joyless praise were
in course of printing, I heard that a mortal illness had indeed stricken
the illustrious poet, the faultless critic, the fearless artist; that no
more of fervent yet of perfect verse, no more of subtle yet of sensitive
comment, will be granted us at the hands of Charles Baudelaire: that now
for ever we must fall back upon what is left us. It is precious enough. We
may see again as various a power as was his, may feel again as fiery a
sympathy, may hear again as strange a murmur of revelation, as sad a
whisper of knowledge, as mysterious a music of emotion; we shall never
find so keen, so delicate, so deep an unison of sense and spirit. What
verse he could make, how he loved all fair and felt all strange things,
with what infallible taste he knew at once the limit and the licence of
his art, all may see at a glance. He could give beauty to the form,
expression to the feeling, most horrible and most obscure to the senses or
souls of lesser men. The chances of things parted us once and again; the
admiration of some years, at last in part expressed, brought me near him
by way of written or transmitted word; let it be an excuse for the
insertion of this note, and for a desire, if so it must be, to repeat for
once the immortal words which too often return upon our lips;
"Ergo in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale!"
[14] There are exceptions, we are told from the first, to all rules; and
the sole exception to this one is great enough to do all but establish a
rival rule. But, as I have tried already to say, the work--all the
work--of Victor Hugo is in its essence artistic, in its accident alone
philanthropic or moral. I call this the sole exception, not being aware
that the written work of Dante or Shelley did ever tend to alter the
material face of things; though they may have desired that it should, and
though their unwritten work may have done so. Accidentally of course a
poet's work may tend towards some moral or actual result; that is beside
the question.
[15] The reader who cares to remember that everything here set down is of
immediate importance and necessity for the understanding of the matter in
hand (namely, the life of Blake, and the faith and works which made that
life what it was) may as well take here a word of comment. It will soon be
necessary for even the very hack-writers and ingenious people of ready
pens and wits who now babble about Balzac in English and French as a
splendid specimen of their craft, fertile but faulty, and so forth--to
understand that they have nothing to do with Balzac; that he is not of
their craft, nor of any but the common craft of all great men--the guild
of godlike things and people; that a shelf holding "all Balzac's
novels--forty volumes long," is not "cabin-furniture" for any chance
"passenger" to select or reject. Error and deficiency there may be in his
work; but none such as they can be aware of. Of poetic form, for example,
we know that he knew nothing; the error would be theirs who should think
his kind of work the worse for that. Among men equally great, the
distinctive supremacy of Balzac is this; that whereas the great men who
are pure artists (Shakespeare for instance) work by implication only, and
hardly care about descending to the level of a preacher's or interpreter's
work, he is the only man not of their kind who is great enough to supply
their place in his own way--to be their correlative in a different class
of workmen; being from his personal point of view simply impeccable and
infallible. The pure artist never asserts; he suggests, and therefore his
meaning is totally lost upon moralists and sciolists--is indeed
irreparably wasted upon the run of men who cannot work out suggestions.
Balzac asserts; and Balzac cannot blunder or lie. So profound and
extensive a capacity of moral apprehension no other prose writer, no man
of mere analytic faculty, ever had or can have. This assuredly, when men
become (as they will have to become) capable of looking beyond the mere
clothes and skin of his work, will be always, as we said, his great
especial praise; that he was, beyond any other man, the master of
morals--the greatest direct expounder of actual moral fact. Once consent
to forget or overlook the mere _entourage_ and social habiliment of
Balzac's intense and illimitable intellect, you cannot fail of seeing that
he of all men was fittest to grapple with all strange things and words,
and compel them by divine violence of spiritual rape to bring forth
flowers and fruits good for food and available for use.
[16] Could God bring down his heart to the making of a thing so deadly and
strong? or could any lesser daemonic force of nature take to itself wings
and fly high enough to assume power equal to such a creation? Could
spiritual force so far descend or material force so far aspire? Or, when
the very stars, and all the armed children of heaven, the "helmed
cherubim" that guide and the "sworded seraphim" that guard their several
planets, wept for pity and fear at sight of this new force of monstrous
matter seen in the deepest night as a fire of menace to man--
"Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?"
We may add another cancelled reading to show how delicately the poem has
been perfected; although by an oversight of the writer's most copies
hitherto have retained some trace of the rough first draught, neglecting
in one line a change necessary to save the sense as well as to complete
the sentence.
"And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet
Could fetch it from the furnace deep
And in thy horrid ribs dare steep?
In what clay and in what mould
Were thine eyes of fury rolled?"
Having cancelled this stanza or sketched ghost of a stanza, Blake in his
hurry of rejection did not at once remember to alter the last line of the
preceding one; leaving thus a stone of some size and slipperiness for
editorial feet to trip upon, until the recovery of that nobler reading--
"What dread hand _framed thy_ dread feet?"
Nor was this little "rock of offence" cleared from the channel of the poem
even by the editor of 1827, who was yet not afraid of laying hand upon the
text. So grave a flaw in so short and so great a lyric was well worth the
pains of removing and is yet worth the pains of accounting for; on which
ground this note must be of value to all who take in verse with eye and
ear instead of touching it merely with eyelash and finger-tip in the
manner of sand-blind students.
[17] Compare the passage in _Ahania_ where the growth of it is defined;
rooted in the rock of separation, watered with the tears of a jealous God,
shot up from sparks and fallen germs of material seed; being after all a
growth of mere error, and vegetable (not spiritual) life; the topmost stem
of it made into a cross whereon to nail the dead redeemer and friend of
men.
[18] Compare again in the _Vision of the Last Judgment_ (v. 2, p. 163),
that definition of the "Divine body of the Saviour, the true Vine of
Eternity," as "the Human Imagination, who appeared to me as coming to
judgment among his saints, and throwing off the Temporal that the Eternal
might be established." The whole of that subtle and eloquent rhapsody is
about the best commentary attainable on Blake's mystical writings and
designs. It is impossible to overstate the debt of gratitude due from all
students of Blake to the transcriber and editor of the _Vision_, whose
indefatigable sense and patient taste have made it legible for all. To
have extracted it piecemeal from the chaos of notes jotted down by Blake
in the most inconceivable way, would have been a praiseworthy labour
enough; but without addition or omission to have constructed these
abortive fragments into a whole so available and so admirable, is a labour
beyond praise.
[19] This exquisite verse did not fall into its place by chance; the poem
has been more than once revised. Its opening stanza stood originally
thus:--
"Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep
Thou wilt every secret keep;
Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,
Thou shalt taste the joys of night."
Before recasting the whole, Blake altered the second line into--
"Canst thou any secret keep?"
The gist of the song is this; the speaker, watching a girl newly-born,
compares her innocuous infancy with the power that through beauty will one
day be hers, her blameless wiles and undeveloped desires with the strong
and subtle qualities now dormant which the years will assuredly awaken
within her; seeing as it were the whole woman asleep in the child, he
smells future fruit in the unblown bud. On retouching his work, Blake thus
wound up the moral and tune of this song in a stanza forming by its rhymes
an exact antiphonal complement to the end of the first _Cradle Song_.
"When thy little heart does wake,
Then the dreadful lightnings break
From thy cheek and from thine eye,
O'er the youthful harvests nigh;
Infant wiles and infant smiles
Heaven and earth of peace beguiles."
The epithet "infant" has supplanted that of "female," which was perhaps
better: as to the grammatical licence, Blake followed in that the
Elizabethan fashion which made the rule of sound predominate over all
others. The song, if it loses simplicity, seems to gain significance by
this expansion of the dim original idea; and beauty by expression of the
peril latent in a life whose smiles as yet breed no strife between
friends, kindle no fire among the unripe shocks of growing corn; but whose
words shall hereafter be as very swords, and her eyes as lightning;
_teterrima belli causa_.
[20] "His," the good man's: this lax piece of grammar (shifting from
singular to plural and back again without much tangible provocation) is
not infrequent with Blake, and would hardly be worth righting if that were
feasible. A remarkable instance is but too patent in the final "chorus" of
the _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_. Such rough licence is given or taken by
old poets; and Blake's English is always beautiful enough to be pardonable
where it slips or halts: especially as its errors are always those of a
rapid lyrical style, never of a tortuous or verbose ingenuity: it stammers
and slips occasionally, but never goes into convulsions like that of some
later versifiers.
[21] Such we must consider, for instance, the second _Little Boy Lost_,
which looks at first more of a riddle and less worth solution than the
haziest section of the prophetic books. A cancelled reading taken from the
rough copy in the _Ideas_ will at all events make one stanza more amenable
to reason:
"I love myself; so does the bird
That picks up crumbs around the door."
Blake was rather given to erase a comparatively reasonable reading and
substitute something which cannot be confidently deciphered by the most
daring self-reliance of audacious ingenuity, until the reader has found
some means of pitching his fancy for a moment in the ordinary key of the
prophet's. This uncomfortable little poem is in effect merely an allegoric
or fabulous appeal against the oppression of formulas (or family
"textualism" of the blind and unctuous sort) which refuse to single and
simple insight, to the outspoken innocence of a child's laughing or
confused analysis, a right to exist on any terms: just as the companion
poem is an appeal, so vague as to fall decidedly flat, against the
externals of moral fashion. Both, but especially the _Girl_, have some
executive merit: not overmuch. To the surprising final query, "Are such
things done on Albion's shore?" one is provoked to respond, "On the whole,
not, as far as we can see;" but the "Albion" of Blake's verse is never
this weaving and spinning country of our working days; it is rather some
inscrutable remote land of Titanic visions, moated with silent white mist
instead of solid and sonorous surf, and peopled with vague pre-Adamite
giants symbolic of more than we can safely define or conceive. An inkling
of the meaning may, if anything can, be extracted from some parts of the
_Jerusalem_; but probably no one will try.
[22] With more time and room to work in, we might have noticed in these
less dramatic and seemingly less original poems of the second series which
take up from the opposite point of view matters already handled to such
splendid effect in the _Songs of Innocence_, a depth and warmth of moral
quality worth remark; infinite tenderness of heart and fiery pity for all
that suffer wrong; something of Hugo's or Shelley's passionate compassion
for those who lie open to "all the oppression that is done under the sun";
something of the anguish and labour, the fever-heat of sleepless mercy and
love incurable which is common to those two great poets. The second _Holy
Thursday_ is doubtless far enough below the high level of the first; but
the second _Chimney-sweeper_ as certainly has a full share of this
passionate grace of pain and pity. Blake's love of children never wrung
out into his work a more pungent pathos or keener taste of tears than in
the last verse of this poem. It stood thus in the first draught:
"And because I am happy and dance and sing
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Who wrap themselves up in our misery."
The quiet tremulous anger of that, its childish sorrow and contempt, are
no less true than subtle in effect. It recalls another floating fragment
of verse on social wrongs which shall be rescued from the chaos of the
_Ideas_:
"There souls of men are bought and sold,
And milk-fed infancy, for gold;
And youths to slaughter-houses led,
And maidens, for a bit of bread."
[23] This verse is of course to be read as one made up of rough but
regular anapaests; the heavier accents falling consequently upon every
third syllable--that is, upon the words _if_, _not_, and _him_. The next
line is almost as rough, and seems indeed to slip into the solid English
iambic; but may also be set right by giving full attention to accent.
[24] A strange and rather beautiful, if grotesque, evidence of the unity
of faith and feeling to which Blake and his wife had come by dint of
living and thinking so long together, is given by one of the stray notes
in this same book: which we transcribe at full on account of its great
biographical value as a study of character. Space might have been found
for it in the Life, if only to prove once again how curiously the nature
and spiritual habits of a great man leave their mark or dye upon the mind
nearest to his own.
"SOUTH MOLTON STREET.
"_Sunday, August, 1807._--My wife was told by a spirit to look for
her fortune by opening by chance a book which she had in her hand; it
was Bysshe's 'Art of Poetry.' She opened the following:--
'I saw 'em kindle with desire,
While with soft sighs they blew the fire;
Saw the approaches of their joy,
He growing more fierce and she less coy;
Saw how they mingled melting rays,
Exchanging love a thousand ways.
Kind was the force on every side;
Her new desire she could not hide,
Nor would the shepherd be denied.
The blessed minute he pursued,
Till she, transported in his arms,
Yields to the conqueror all her charms.
His panting breast to hers now joined,
They feast on raptures unconfined,
Vast and luxuriant; such as prove
The immortality of love.
For who but a Divinity
Could mingle souls to that degree
And melt them into ecstasy?
Now like the Phoenix both expire,
While from the ashes of their fire
Springs up a new and soft desire.
Like charmers, thrice they did invoke
The God, and thrice new vigour took.'--_Behn._
"I was so well pleased with her luck that I thought I would try my
own, and opened the following:--
'As when the winds their airy quarrel try,
Jostling from every quarter of the sky,
This way and that the mountain oak they bear,
His boughs they scatter and his branches tear;
With leaves and falling mast they spread the ground;
The hollow valleys echo to the sound;
Unmoved, the royal plant their fury mocks,
Or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks:
For as he shoots his towering head on high,
So deep in earth his fixed foundations lie.'--_Dryden's Virgil._"
Nothing is ever so cynical as innocence, whether it be a child's or a
mystic's. As a poet, Blake had some reason to be "well pleased" with his
wife's curious windfall; for those verses of the illustrious Aphra's have
some real energy and beauty of form, visible to those who care to make
allowance, first for the conventional English of the time, and secondly
for the naked violence of manner natural to that she-satyr, whose really
great lyrical gifts are hopelessly overlaid and encrusted by the rough
repulsive husk of her incredible style of speech. Even "Astraea" must
however have fair play and fair praise; and the simple truth is that, when
writing her best, this "unmentionable" poetess has a vigorous grace and a
noble sense of metre to be found in no other song-writer of her time. One
song, fished up by Mr. Dyce out of the weltering sewerage of Aphra's
unreadable and unutterable plays, has a splendid quality of verse, and
even some degree of sentiment not wholly porcine. Take four lines as a
sample, and Blake's implied approval will hardly seem unjustifiable:--
"From thy bright eyes he took those fires
Which round about in sport he hurled;
But 'twas from mine he took desires
Enough to undo the amorous world."
The strong and subtle cadence of that magnificent fourth verse gives
evidence of so delicate an ear and such dexterous power of hand as no
other poet between the Restoration date and Blake's own time has left
proof of in serious or tragic song. Great as is Dryden's lyrical work in
more ways than one, its main quality is mere strength of intellect and
solidity of handling--the forcible and imperial manner of his satires; and
in pure literal song-writing, which (rather than any 'ode' or such-like
mixed poem) may be taken as the absolute and final test of a poet's
lyrical nature, he never came near this mark. Francois Villon and Aphra
Behn, the two most inexpressibly non-respectable of male or female
Bohemians and poets, were alike in this as well; that the supreme gift of
each, in a time sufficiently barren of lyrical merit, was the gift of
writing admirable songs; and this, after all, has perhaps borne better
fruit for us than any gift of moral excellence.
[25] Another version of this line, with less of pungent and brilliant
effect, has yet a touch of sound in it worth preserving: some may even
prefer it in point of simple lyrical sweetness:
"She played and she melted in all her prime:
Ah! that sweet love should be thought a crime."
[26] On closer inspection of Blake's rapid autograph I suspect that in the
second line those who please may read "the ruddy limbs and flowering
hair," or perhaps "flowery;" but the type of flame is more familiar to
Blake. Compare further on "A Song of Liberty."
[27] Other readings are "soothed" and "smiled"--readings adopted after the
insertion of the preceding stanza. As the subject is a child not yet grown
to standing and walking age, these readings are perhaps better, though
less simple in sound, than the one I have retained.
[28] Here and throughout to the end, duly altering metre and grammar with
a quite laudable care, Blake has substituted "my father" for the
"priests;" not I think to the improvement of the poem, though probably
with an eye to making the end cohere rather more closely with the
beginning. This and the "Myrtle" are shoots of the same stock, and differ
only in the second grafting. In the last-named poem the father's office
was originally thus;
"Oft my myrtle sighed in vain
To behold my heavy chain:
Oft my father saw us sigh,
And laughed at our simplicity."
Here too Blake had at first written, "Oft the priest beheld us sigh;" he
afterwards cancelled the whole passage, perhaps on first remarking the
rather too grotesque confusion of a symbolic myrtle with a literal wife;
and the last stanza in either form is identical. The simple subtle grace
of both poems, and the singular care of revision bestowed on them, are
equally worth notice.
[29] Those who insist on the tight lacing of grammatical stays upon the
"pained loveliness" of a muse's over-pliant body may use if they please
Blake's own amended reading; in which otherwise the main salt of the poem
is considerably diluted as by tepid water: the angel (one might say) has
his sting blunted and the best quill of his pinion pulled out.
"And without one word said
Had a peach from the tree;
And still as a maid," &c.
[30] We may find place here for another fairy song, quaint in shape and
faint in colour, but with the signet of Blake upon it; copied from a loose
scrap of paper on the back of which is a pencilled sketch of Hercules
throttling the serpents, whose twisted limbs make a sort of spiral cradle
around and above the child's triumphant figure: an attendant, naked, falls
back in terror with sharp recoil of drawn-up limbs; Alcmena and Amphitryon
watch the struggle in silence, he grasping her hand.