characters it included: Elton Hammond, for instance, a contemporary if
not an associate. He inherited his father's tea business in Milk Street.
In order, he said, to set an example to the world how a business should
be carried on, and that he might not be interfered with in his plans, he
turned off the clerks and every servant in the establishment, which soon
wound up the business altogether. For a while he had no other society
than a little child, which he taught its letters, and a mouse, that fed
out of his hands. He journalized his food, his sleep, his dreams. He had
a conviction that he was to have been, and ought to have been, the
greatest of men, but was conscious in fact that he was not. The reason
assigned by him for putting an end to his life was that he could not
condescend to live without fulfilling his proper vocation. He said to
one of his friends that he was on the point of making a discovery which
would put an end to physical and moral evil in the world. He quarreled
with another of his friends for not being willing to join him in
carrying a heavy box through the streets of London for a poor woman. He
refused a private secretaryship to Rough, a colonial chief justice, on
the ground of the obligation involved to tell a lie and write a lie
every day, subscribing himself the humble servant of people he did not
serve, and toward whom he felt no humility. Here are a few things he
wrote: "When I was about eight or ten I promised marriage to a wrinkled
cook we had, aged about sixty-five. I was convinced of the
insignificance of beauty, but really felt some considerable ease at
hearing of her death, about four years after, when I began to repent of
my vow."... "I always said that I would do anything to make another
happy, and told a boy I would give him a shilling if it would make him
happy; he said it would, so I gave it to him. It is not to be wondered
at that I had plenty of such applications, and soon emptied my purse. It
is true I rather grudged the money, because the boys laughed rather more
than I wished them. But it would have been inconsistent to have appeared
dissatisfied. Some of them were generous enough to return the money, and
I was prudent enough to take it, though I declared that if it would make
them happy I should be sorry to have it back."... "It is not pain, it is
not death, that I dread, it is the hatred of a man; there is something
in it so shocking that I would rather submit to any injury than incur or
increase the hatred of a man by revenging it."... "The chief
philosophical value of my papers I conceive to be that they record
something of a mind that was very near taking a station far above all
that have hitherto appeared in the world."... "It is provoking that the
secret of rendering man perfect in wisdom, power, virtue, and happiness,
should die with me. I never till this moment doubted that some other
person would discover it; but I now recollect that when I have relied on
others I have always been disappointed. Perhaps none may ever discover
it, and the human race has lost its only chance of eternal
happiness."... "I believe that man requires religion. I believe that
there is no true religion now existing. I believe that there will be
one. It will not, after eighteen hundred years of existence, be of
questionable truth and utility, but perhaps in eighteen years be
entirely spread over the earth, an effectual remedy for all human
suffering, and a source of perpetual joy. It will not need immense
learning to be understood, it will be subject to no controversy."...
"Another sufficient reason for suicide is, that I was this morning out
of temper with Mrs. Douglas (for no fault of hers). I did not betray
myself in the least, but I reflected to be exposed to the possibility of
such an event once a year was evil enough to render life intolerable.
The disgrace of using an impatient word is to me overpowering."... "I am
stupefied with writing, and yet I cannot go my long journey without
taking leave of one from whom I have received so much kindness, and from
whose society so much delight. My place is booked in Charon's boat
to-night at twelve. Diana kindly consents to be of the party. This is
handsome of her. She was not looked for on my part. Perhaps she is
willing to acknowledge my obedience to her laws by a genteel compliment.
Good. The gods, then, are grateful." To the coroner and his jury he
wrote, "Let me suggest the following verdict, as combining literal truth
with justice: 'Died by his own hand, but not feloniously.' If I have
offended God, it is for God, not you, to inquire. Especial public duties
I have none. If I have deserted any engagement in society, let the
parties aggrieved consign my name to obloquy. I have for nearly seven
years been disentangling myself from all my engagements, that I might at
last be free to retire from life. I am free to-day, and avail myself of
my liberty. I cannot be a good man, and prefer death to being a bad
one,--as bad as I have been and as others are."
And there was Blake--"artist, genius, mystic, or madman?" "Probably
all," thought Robinson, one of his warmest admirers; for he had
admirers, and some of them were eminent. Coleridge knew him, and talked
finely about him. Wordsworth thought he had "in him the elements of
poetry much more than either Byron or Scott." Lamb liked his poems.
Hazlitt said of them, "They are beautiful, and only too deep for the
vulgar." His genius as an artist was praised by Flaxman and Fuseli. His
countenance is described as "Socratic," with "an expression of great
sweetness;" "when animated he had about him an air of inspiration."
Though in great poverty, he was ever a gentleman; with genuine dignity
and independence, he scorned all presents. He wrote songs, composed
music, and painted, at the same time he pursued his business as an
engraver. Among his friends he gave out that his pictures were copied
from great works revealed to him, and that his lessons in art were given
him by celestial tongues. When he spoke of his "visions," it was in the
ordinary unemphatic tones in which we speak of every-day matters. He
conversed familiarly with the spirits of Homer, Moses, Pindar, Dante,
Shakespeare, Voltaire, Sir William Wallace, Milton, and other
illustrious dead, giving repeatedly their very words in their
conversations. Sometimes, too, he wrangled with demons. His books (and
his MSS. are immense in quantity) are dictations from the spirits. He
possessed, it was said, the highest and most exalted powers of the mind,
but not the lower. "He could fly, but he could not walk; he had genius
and inspiration, without the prosaic balance-wheel of common sense." In
poetry, it was observed, he most enjoyed the parts which to others are
most obscure. His wife Katherine, good soul, believed in him, and was
invaluable to him. She was ever sitting by his side, or assisting him at
the press. "You know, dear," she said, believingly, "the first time you
saw God was when you were four years old, and he put his head to the
window, and set you a-screaming." Both believed that his pictures were
veritable visions transferred to the canvas or the plate. Sixteen of his
mystical designs are illustrations of "The Gates of Paradise," one
hundred of "Jerusalem," and twenty-seven "singular, but powerful
drawings" disclose the mysteries of hell. He wrote to Flaxman,
addressing him as "Dear Sculptor of Eternity," and saying, in his
strange, wild way, "In my brain are studies and chambers filled with
books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of
eternity, before my mortal life; and these works are the delight and
study of archangels." A friend said to him, "You express yourself as
Socrates used to do. What resemblance do you suppose there is between
your spirit and his?" "The same as between our countenances," he
answered. After a pause he added, "I was Socrates;" and then, as if
correcting himself, said, "a sort of brother. I must have had
conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure
recollection of having been with both of them." Once he said, "There is
no use in education. I hold it to be wrong. It is the great sin. It is
eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was the fault
of Plato. He knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and
evil. There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes."
Being asked about the moral character of Dante, in writing his
"Vision,"--was he pure? "Pure," said Blake, "do you think there is any
purity in God's eyes? The angels in heaven are no more so than we. 'He
chargeth his angels with folly.'" He afterward represented the Supreme
Being as liable to error. "Did he not repent him that he had made
Nineveh?" Though he spoke of his happiness, he also alluded to past
sufferings, and to suffering as necessary. "There is suffering in
heaven, for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is also the
capacity of pain." Comparing moral with natural evil, he said, "Who
shall say that God thinks evil? That is a wise tale of the Mahometans,
of the angel of the Lord that murdered the infant" (alluding to the
Hermit of Parnell). "Is not every infant that dies of disease murdered
by an angel?" "I saw Milton," he said on one occasion, "and he told me
to beware of being misled by his Paradise Lost. In particular he wished
me to show the falsehood of the doctrine, that carnal pleasures arose
from the Fall. The Fall could not produce any pleasure." He spoke of
Milton as being at one time a sort of classical atheist, and of Dante as
being now with God. His faculty of vision, he said, he had had from
early infancy. He thought all men partook of it, but it is lost for want
of being cultivated. "I assert for myself," said he, "that I do not
behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hinderance and not
action. 'What!' it will be questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not
see a disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?' Oh no, no, no! I see an
innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying, 'Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord God Almighty.' I question not my corporeal eye any more than I
would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not
with it."... "I have written more than Voltaire or Rousseau. Six or
seven epic poems as long as Homer, and twenty tragedies as long as
Macbeth."... "I write when commanded by the spirits, and the moment I
have written I see the words fly about the room in all directions. It is
then published, and the spirits can read. My MS. is of no further use. I
have been tempted to burn my MSS., but my wife won't let me."... "Men
are born with a devil and an angel."... "I have never known a very bad
man, who had not something very good about him."... "I should be sorry
if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so
much taken from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit I
wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy." For
the greater part of his life, he "lived in a garret, on crusts of
bread." Death he considered as nothing but "going from one room to
another." He died with his pencil in his hand, making a likeness of his
wife, and chanting pleasant songs. Died, she said, "like an angel."
And George Dyer--a pet acquaintance of Lamb's--what a character was he!
A bundle of contradictions if ever there was one. Poor and always
struggling, but never envious, and utterly without hatred of the rich. A
poet whose poetry was to himself "as good as anybody's, and anybody's as
good as his own." A bachelor, his life was solitary, but he never
thought of his solitude, till it was suggested to him by an observing,
sympathizing widow, who kindly and generously consented to share it with
him--her fourth husband! He is characterized by one of his literary
friends as "one of the best creatures morally that ever breathed." He
was a ripe scholar, but to the end of his days (and he lived to be
eighty-five) he was a bookseller's drudge. He made indexes, corrected
the press, and occasionally gave lessons in Greek and Latin. Simple and
kind, he repeatedly gave away his last guinea. He was the author of the
Life and Writings of Robert Robinson, which was pronounced by Wordsworth
and Samuel Parr one of the best biographies in the language. The charm
of the book is that Robinson's peculiar humor was wholly unappreciated
by the simple-minded biographer. Robinson was a fine humorist; Dyer had
absolutely no sense of humor. It was when he was on his way from Lamb's
to Mrs. Barbauld's, that, in his absent-mindedness, he walked straight
into New River, and was with difficulty saved from drowning. (Young, one
of Fielding's intimate friends, who sat for the portrait of Parson
Adams, was another such character. He also "supported an uncomfortable
existence by translating for the booksellers from the Greek,"
overflowed with benevolence and learning, and was noted for his absence
of mind. He had been chaplain of a regiment during Marlborough's wars;
and "meditating one evening upon the glories of nature, and the goodness
of Providence, he walked straight into the camp of the enemy; nor was he
aroused from his reverie till the hostile sentinel shouted, 'Who goes
there?' The commanding officer, finding that he had come among them in
simplicity and not in guile, allowed him to return, and lose himself, if
he pleased, in meditations on his danger and deliverance.") It is said
that certain roguish young ladies, Dyer's cousins, lacking due reverence
for learning and poetry, were wont to heap all sorts of meats upon the
worthy gentleman's plate at dinner, he being lost in conversation until
near the close of the repast, when he would suddenly recollect himself
and fall to till he had finished the whole. Talfourd, speaking of Lamb
and Dyer, says, "No contrast could be more vivid than that presented by
the relations of each to the literature they both loved,--one divining
its inmost essences, plucking out the heart of its mysteries, shedding
light on its dimmest recesses; the other devoted with equal assiduity to
its externals. Books, to Dyer, 'were a real world, both pure and good;'
among them he passed, unconscious of time, from youth to extreme old
age, vegetating on their dates and forms, and 'trivial fond records,' in
the learned air of great libraries, or the dusty confusion of his own,
with the least possible apprehension of any human interest vital in
their pages, or of any spirit of wit or fancy glancing across them. His
life was an academic pastoral. Methinks I see his gaunt, awkward form,
set off by trousers too short, like those outgrown by a gawky lad, and a
rusty coat as much too large for the wearer, hanging about him like
those garments which the aristocratic Milesian peasantry prefer to the
most comfortable rustic dress; his long head silvered over with short
yet straggling hair, and his dark gray eyes glistening with faith and
wonder, as Lamb satisfies the curiosity which has gently disturbed his
studies as to the authorship of the Waverley Novels, by telling him, in
the strictest confidence, that they are the works of Lord Castlereagh,
just returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna. Off he runs,
with animated stride and shambling enthusiasm, nor stops till he reaches
Maida Hill, and breathes his news into the startled ear of Leigh Hunt,
who, 'as a public writer,' ought to be possessed of the great fact with
which George is laden! Or shall I endeavor to revive the bewildered look
with which just after he had been announced as one of Lord Stanhope's
executors and residuary legatees, he received Lamb's grave inquiry
whether it was true, as commonly reported, that he was to be made a
lord? 'Oh dear, no, Mr. Lamb,' responded he with earnest seriousness,
but not without a moment's quivering vanity. 'I could not think of such
a thing; it is not true, I assure you.' 'I thought not,' said Lamb, 'and
I contradict it wherever I go. But the government will not ask your
consent; they may raise you to the peerage without your ever knowing
it.' 'I hope not, Mr. Lamb; indeed--indeed, I hope not. It would not
suit me at all,' responded Dyer, and went his way musing on the
possibility of a strange honor descending on his reluctant brow. Or
shall I recall the visible presentment of his bland unconsciousness of
evil when his sportive friend taxed it to the utmost by suddenly asking
what he thought of the murderer Williams, who, after destroying two
families in Ratcliffe Highway, had broken prison by suicide, and whose
body had just before been conveyed in shocking procession to its
cross-road grave? The desperate attempt to compel the gentle optimist to
speak ill of a mortal creature produced no happier success than the
answer, 'Why, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been rather an
eccentric character.'" Honest, simple soul! My Uncle Toby over again,
for all the world.