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WILLIAM BLAKE
[Illustration: FROM BLAIR'S "GRAVE": THE LAST JUDGMENT
Engraved by L. Schiavonetti after Blake's design. 1808]
WILLIAM BLAKE
A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND ART WORK
BY IRENE LANGRIDGE
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1904
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
PREFACE
Some years ago, I became deeply interested in William Blake, and made
myself familiar with all that our public collections in London contain of
his art-work. It seemed to me that this work was still so little known and
appreciated by the public, that a short book might well be written to
serve as a pointer to our national Blake treasures. The standard works on
Blake--Gilchrist's Life, Mr. A. C. Swinburne's Critical Essay, Messrs.
Ellis and Yeats' exhaustive volumes, and Mr. W. M. Rossetti's Aldine
Essay--are of great literary excellence and high critical quality, and
must ever remain the great authorities on the subject; but, owing to these
works being either out of print, very lengthy, very expensive, or
unillustrated, a want may be supplied by, and an opportunity of usefulness
open to, such a book as the present one. Different in scope as it is from
any other book on Blake, and modest in aim, it deals with the poet-artist
as he is manifested in those works of his which are accessible to the
public.
In seeking to sketch again his artistic personality, I have been guided by
the conclusions of his eminent biographers and critics wherever they
coincided with my own intuitive convictions. But in the study of a
character and work so out of the usual, so exotic and strange as those of
Blake, unanimity of opinion and judgement is hardly to be hoped for, and
the variety of points of view from which each new student sees him, may
assist to the rounding and filling out of the portrait drawn in so
masterly a manner in the first instance by Alexander Gilchrist.
My best thanks are due to Mr. A. B. Langridge for reading my proofs and
for the photographs which he took expressly to illustrate this volume.
Also to Mr. Frederic Shields for numerous acts of kindness and the loan of
original Blake drawings, to Sir Charles Dilke, to Messrs. Chatto and
Windus, to Mr. Laurence Binyon, Mr. G. K. Fortescue, and to Dr. G. C.
Williamson for help given to me in various ways.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EARLY YEARS 1
II. LIFE AT FELPHAM 21
III. THE PROCESSION OF THE PILGRIMS 32
IV. DECLINING YEARS 45
V. HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS 57
VI. HIS MYSTICAL NATURE 72
VII. HIS ART WORK 80
Songs of Innocence.
Book of Thel.
Gates of Paradise.
Songs of Experience.
Tales for Children.
VIII. THE PROPHETIC BOOKS 101
Vision of the Daughters of Albion.
America.
Europe.
IX. THE PROPHETIC BOOKS, continued 116
Book of Urizen.
The Small Book of Designs.
The Large Book of Designs.
Song of Los.
Book of Los.
Jerusalem.
Milton.
X. WORK IN ILLUSTRATION 136
Young's "Night Thoughts."
Blair's "Grave."
Thornton's "Pastorals."
The Book of Job.
XI. WORK IN THE EXHIBITION OF 1904 159
XII. ENGRAVINGS AND DRAWINGS IN THE PRINT ROOM 176
The Canterbury Pilgrimage.
Dante.
Pencil Sketches.
Works in the National Gallery.
INDEX 195
ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE PAGE
THE LAST JUDGMENT (from Blair's "Grave") _Frontispiece_
PORTRAIT OF BLAKE 1
THE LITTLE GIRL LOST (from "Songs of Experience") 12
THE DIVINE IMAGE (from "Songs of Innocence") 16
"AMERICA," a page from 20
THE LAZAR HOUSE 22
"EUROPE," a page from 24
LOS, ENITHARMON, AND ORC (from "Urizen") 26
THE RE-UNION OF THE SOUL AND THE BODY (from "The Grave") 32
THE PILGRIMAGE TO CANTERBURY (Stothard) 36
CHAUCER'S "CANTERBURY PILGRIMS" (Blake) 36
SATAN TORMENTING JOB 44
BLAKE'S ROOM IN FOUNTAIN COURT (F. J. Shields) 53
DEATH'S DOOR (from "The Grave") 66
THE SHEPHERD (from "Songs of Innocence") 80
FRONTISPIECE FROM "SONGS OF INNOCENCE" 84
THE LAMB (from "Songs of Innocence") 86
THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL, a page from 90
"I WANT, I WANT" (from "Gates of Paradise") 94
THE DELUGE (after a Plate in "Gates of Paradise") 96
THE TYGER (from "Songs of Experience") 98
INFANT JOY (from "Songs of Innocence") 100
"VISIONS OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION," a page from 106
"AMERICA," the Frontispiece to 108
"AMERICA," a page from 110
"EUROPE," the Frontispiece to ("The Ancient of Days") 112
"EUROPE," the first page from 114
"URIZEN," the title-page from 116
"URIZEN," Plate VI from 118
"THE SMALL BOOK OF DESIGNS," Plate IX from 120
THE ACCUSERS (from "The Large Book of Designs") 122
"JERUSALEM," page 33 from 128
ROBERT (from "Milton") 134
TIME SPEEDING AWAY (page 25 from "Night Thoughts") 138
DEATH OF THE STRONG WICKED MAN (from "The Grave") 140
THE SOUL RELUCTANTLY PARTING FROM THE BODY (from
"The Grave") 144
THORNTON'S "VIRGIL'S PASTORALS," woodcuts from 146
"THE BOOK OF JOB," Plate II 150
"THE BOOK OF JOB," Plate V 152
"THE BOOK OF JOB," Plate XIV 154
THE NATIVITY 162
THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT 168
OBERON, TITANIA, AND PUCK 170
VISION OF QUEEN KATHERINE 174
THE CIRCLE OF THE LUSTFUL (from "Dante") 180
PENCIL SKETCH FOR "DEATH'S DOOR" 184
HEAD OF AN OLD MAN 186
THE WHORE OF BABYLON 188
DAVID DELIVERED OUT OF DEEP WATERS 190
THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF PITT GUIDING BEHEMOTH 192
BOOKS ON BLAKE
BINYON, ROBERT LAURENCE. "William Blake: being all his woodcuts
photographically reproduced in facsimile." London, 1902. 4o. [The Unicorn
Press: Little Engravings, No. 2.]
CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN. "The Lives of the most eminent British Painters,
Sculptors and Architects." London, 1829-33. 12o. [Part of "The Family
Library," 6 vols.] Note: a second edition of this work was published in
1830-37, in 16o, 6 vols.
ELLIS, E. J., and YEATS, W. B. "The works of William Blake, poetic,
symbolic, and critical." Edited with lithographs of the illustrated
"Prophetic Books," and a memoir and interpretation. London, B. Quaritch,
1893. 8o. 3 vols.
GARNETT (SIR) RICHARD. "William Blake, Painter and Poet." London, 1895. 80
pp. folio. ["The Portfolio Monographs," No. 22.]
GILCHRIST, ALEXANDER. "The Life of W. Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus.'" With
selections from his poems and other writings. Edited by Anne Gilchrist,
with the assistance of D. G. and W. M. Rossetti. London, 1863. 8o. 2 vols.
Note: a second enlarged edition was published in 1880. London, Macmillan &
Co. 8o. 2 vols.
MALKIN, THOMAS W. "A Father's Memoirs of his Child." London, 1806. 8o.
ROSSETTI, W. M. "The Poetical Works of William Blake." Edited with a
prefatory memoir. London, 1874. 8o. ["The Aldine Poets." George Bell &
Sons.]
SCOTT, WILLIAM BELL. "Exhibition of the Works of William Blake." With
introductory memoir. London, The Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1876. 4o.
SCOTT, WILLIAM BELL. "William Blake." Etchings from his works (with
descriptive text). London, Chatto and Windus, 1878. Folio.
SMETHAM, JAMES. "Essay on Blake." (Reprinted in Gilchrist's work, q.v.,
from the "London Quarterly Review").
SWINBURNE, A. C. "William Blake." A critical essay, with illustrations
from Blake's designs in facsimile, coloured and plain. Second edition.
London, 1868. 8o.
[Illustration: WILLIAM BLAKE]
WILLIAM BLAKE
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
The work of one of the greatest spirits that ever made Art his medium has
yet its way to make among the general public. The world entertained the
angel unawares, for three-quarters of a century have passed since the
death of William Blake, and still his name and his work are but
indifferently known. Yet to those that know them, the designs from his
pencil, and the poems from his pen, are among the most precious things
that Art has bequeathed to us.
It is my purpose in the following pages to tell over again the main
outlines of his life, quite shortly and simply, for the great biography on
Blake (that of Alexander Gilchrist) can be consulted by all, and contains
almost every detail known about him. To this monumental work, and to
Messrs. Ellis and Yeats's more recently issued and exhaustive Commentary
on Blake, I owe all my facts.
A brief memoir is a necessary preface to the review I propose making of
those engraved and painted books, pictures, drawings and engravings of
Blake's which our National Collections possess.
William Blake was one of those unique beings who live above this actual
world, in the high places of imagination. At four years old he saw his
first vision, as his wife reminded him in old age, in the presence of Mr.
Crabb Robinson: "You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you
were four years old, and He put His head to the window and set you
screaming." Quaintly, crudely, as the story is told by Mrs. Blake, it
bears testimony to the fact that the visionary faculty was developed in
Blake from the beginning. Imagination claimed him definitely as her child
from that early day when, having rambled far afield into the country (as
it was his pastime to do throughout life), he saw, in a meadow near
Dulwich, a tree amongst whose branches glistening angels clustered and
sang. It may be, as one of Blake's critics suggests, that Nature was
herself the basis of the supernatural beauty he saw, though he was all
unwitting of it. Standing beneath a tree laden with delicate pink blossom,
and gazing up into the rosy gloom, Blake may well have translated this
pulsating beauty into a miracle. Above among the greenery he may have
seemed to catch glimpses of aspiring hands and faces among the crowding
wings of flame and rose and sun-kissed gold. A little breeze would set
angelic wings and garments all a-moving and a-fluttering, and a thrush's
voice suddenly cleaving the silence seem an angel's song indeed, too
exquisite to be endured without tears, to the quivering, spell-bound
wanderer. Such _may_ have been the explanation of this early vision, but
Blake himself never attributed any natural cause to such spiritual
manifestations. Everything was alive to him with a strange inner life: the
"vegetable world," as he called it, was but the shadow of the real world
of imagination, whose spiritual population was more clearly discernible to
his highly-wrought consciousness, than natural phenomena themselves.
Narrowly did he escape a whipping from his father, the worthy hosier, for
what that matter-of-fact man could not but consider a most impudent
invention on the child's part. The incident was a foreshadowing of the
poet-painter's life. The mysterious regions in which his spirit wandered
so fearlessly, and which his poems and his drawings represented to the
world, had but scanty attraction for his time. It would be truer perhaps
to say that they were more often regarded with fear and repulsion. The
mortal who dares to raise even the corner of the veil that so discreetly
hides from our material world the many other existent conditions of
consciousness, the great Beyond of Spirit Life, does so at his own risk,
and with the certainty of earning his fellow men's distrust and
disapproval. The outlook on that immensity has a tendency, it is true, to
endanger the perfect mental equilibrium; but though the age--professing
faith in a set of decent religious formulae, but in reality sceptical of
all spiritual life and destiny--called Blake mad, he was recognized by a
few chosen spirits as a great master and seer. The story of his life
contains but few incidents, but through these incidents we see a soul
travelling.
William Blake was born in 1757 at 28, Broad Street, Carnaby Market, Soho.
The old house still stands, but looks very dirty and depressing, like the
street, which, since Blake played in it, has suffered a dingy declension.
Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, who have added some biographical details to
Gilchrist's Life, state that William's father, the hosier, James Blake,
was the son of an Irishman, one John O'Neil. John O'Neil married a girl
from Rathmines, Dublin, called Ellen Blake, and as he soon afterwards got
into debt and trouble of one sort and another, he dropped his name of
O'Neil and adopted his wife's maiden name. This fact, if established
beyond doubt, would seem to be of singular importance, as the presence of
Irish blood in William Blake would account for several strange
characteristics which are not otherwise understandable. The Kelts are
always particularly sensitive and open to spiritual experience.
Imagination, second sight, and acute psychic consciousness, seem to be
the peculiar attributes of the race; and these gifts are seldom to be
found in a pure Anglo-Saxon. There were four other children, James, of
whom we shall hear again, Robert, our artist's beloved younger brother,
John, a ne'er-do-weel, and a girl of whom not much is known.
Very early William developed a taste for art, and his father, with more
sense than usually characterizes the parents of great men, allowed him to
follow his bent, and sent him, from the age of ten to fourteen, to the
drawing class of one Pars, in the Strand. We read of his attending picture
sales and occasionally buying drawings and prints after Raphael, Michael
Angelo, Albert Duerer, and other old masters at prices which would make the
modern collector green with envy. But we do not hear of Blake's attending
any other school either before or after leaving Pars for the purpose of
furthering his general education. All the knowledge that he acquired
outside Art was self-chosen and self-taught. A sound general education is
the firmest basis on which to build a tower of observation from which the
world and life may be surveyed with judgement. Blake's beautiful and
fantastic house of thought, however, was erected on no such foundation.
Perhaps instinct guided his choice of mental food: certain it is that the
peculiar education he gave himself enabled him to preserve his own
personality in all its vital energy. Pars appears to have been the
Squarcione of that generation. He had been sent to Greece by the
Dilettante Society to study ruined temples and broken statues. On his
return to England he set up a school in the Strand to teach drawing from
plaster casts after the antique.
When he was fourteen, with a view to getting a trade by which he could
earn his daily bread, Blake's father determined to apprentice him to an
engraver. He took him first to Rylands, an eminent engraver with a Court
appointment, but the boy said after the interview, "Father, I do not like
that man's face. He looks as if he would live to be hanged." Strange
forecast this proved to be, for in 1783 Rylands was indeed hanged for
forgery. Blake was finally apprenticed to Basire, a sound craftsman, but
of a somewhat hard and dry manner. Basire's style as an engraver set its
stamp on Blake, there is no doubt. It would have hampered most men
severely, rendering their work formal and immobile, but Blake turned it to
a strange account, and it became expressive in his hands. When in his
later years he found that he had outgrown it, he modified it to suit his
new requirements, but it had been a laborious and useful servant, if not a
gracious one. During his apprenticeship Basire set him to draw all the
mediaeval tombs and monuments in Westminster Abbey and other churches for
a certain publication to be brought out by the firm. In doing this Blake
imbibed large draughts of the intense and fervent Gothic spirit. Its deep
innerness, its passionate aspiration, its whimsicality, and its quaint
decorative exuberance, expressed alike in angels and gargoyles, found and
touched a vibrating chord in his heart. Gothic art entered into him and
became part of him. Its influence was strong, though it took a
characteristically Blakeian expression always, and those long mornings
spent among the slanting sunbeams and the whispering silence of the
chapels around the King Confessor's tomb, were among the truly eventful
incidents of his life.
In many of his designs a Gothic church with spires and buttresses like
Westminster,--often a mere symbol sufficient to recall it, occasionally
carefully and elaborately drawn in--stands as an embodiment of Blake's
idea of worship.
Strange thoughts must have come to him among those forests of slender
pillars and arches! Some hint of them is conveyed by an engraving he did
during the period of drawing in the Abbey. It is after a drawing (probably
one bought by him cheap at a sale room) by Michael Angelo, and has the
imaginative inscription written on it by Blake, "Joseph of Arimathea among
the Rocks of Albion. This is one of the Gothic artists who built the
cathedrals in what we call the dark ages, wandering about in sheepskin and
goatskin, of whom the world was not worthy." Joseph of Arimathea, it will
be remembered, is supposed to have come to Glastonbury in 63 A.D. and
built the first Christian Church.
He did not always work in the Abbey in quiet. There is a story told by
Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, of how he was plagued by the Westminster boys
till he laid his grievance before the Dean, who thereupon deprived the
boys of the right to wander about the Abbey at their pleasure, a right
denied to them to this day.
At twenty, Blake's apprenticeship to Basire being ended, he attended the
Academy schools and drew from the antique under Keeper Moser, picking out
for his chief delight and most ardent study the drawings of Michael Angelo
and Raphael--a very barbaric choice it was considered, according to the
decadent taste of the period. Moser recommended him to give up poring over
"those old hard, stiff, dry, unfinished works of art," and to turn his
attention to Le Brun and Rubens, some of whose drawings he fetched out for
Blake's inspection. Blake, however, who was never able to conceal his
thoughts, nor to express them in anything but forcible terms, burst out,
"These things that you call finished, are not even begun; how then can
they be finished?" and comments on the incident, which he relates in his
MS. notes on "Reynolds' Discourses," made in his old age, "that the man
who does not know the beginning, cannot know the end of art." By this he
meant, that to be preoccupied as were Rubens and Le Brun, with the merely
faithful representation of the beauty of the body, to dwell as an end in
itself on the wonder of white shoulders, tapering fingers, and too
luscious flesh, to linger in the folds and intricacies of silk and velvet
robes, and to spend strength and power on these things, was mere
foolishness and blundering.
Physical beauty, splendour of colour, only thrilled and arrested him when
he recognized in them the symbols of an idea, when they seemed to hint of
things rarer and more excellent than any purely natural or intrinsic
attribute. If he could discriminate its eternal inner message, and could
make it visible to the world, then was physical beauty worthy of
reproduction. But he seldom dwelt on beauty for its own sake, but only
when it was spiritually significant; so it is easy to see why he was
inaccessible to the influence of such artists as Rubens and Le Brun.
At the Academy Schools he had the opportunity of drawing from the living
model, and profited by it to a certain limited extent. But he always had
an aversion to it, declaring that to his whimsical nature it "smelt of
mortality." However he might and did justify his negligence of this
important branch of technique, his art was necessarily weakened by it.
Technique is the language of art, and is only to be obtained by frequent
and laboriously faithful reference to nature. It is true that Blake's
strong power of generalizing, along with his marvellous gift of recalling
at desire things discriminated by him, made the achievement of technique
through methods of life study a less urgent necessity to him than to other
men who had no such retentive artistic memories. Essential lines Blake
never failed to give, but by intention rather than from any inability he
seldom gives more than these essential lines in the figures he drew and
painted.
After all it is possible that his power of delineating swift movement, and
the great range of emotions that correspond to that, might have been
injured or lost by too close an application to the artificially posed
human figure. We have seen much life lost in the too close study of life,
as in the otherwise exquisite work of Lord Leighton.
Blake believed that to draw from the typical forms seen by him in vision
was his true purpose and aim, and the study of individual human forms
filled his eye with confusion, for, as he was for ever asserting, Nature
seemed to him but a faint and garbled version of the grand originals seen
in imagination, that is, in truth.
While Blake was educating himself in art, he had to earn his livelihood by
engraver's work, and between 1779 and 1782 one or two booksellers employed
him to engrave designs after various artists. Among these artists was
Stothard, to whom, in 1782, Blake was introduced. Stothard brought Flaxman
and Blake together, and the three became warm friends. It was only after
many years, and then through the machinations of an evil man (the
publisher Cromek), that Blake became estranged from Stothard, and
partially also from Flaxman.
In 1780 Blake exhibited his first picture in the Academy, "The Death of
Earl Godwin." It was only the twelfth exhibition of the institution, and
the first to be held at Somerset House. How curiously do its four hundred
and eighty-seven exhibits (including wax work and a design for a fan)
contrast with our mammoth Academies of to-day! Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mary
Moser, Gainsborough, Angelica Kauffman, Cosway and Fuseli, were all
contributors in the year of grace 1780. Blake was in sympathy with none of
them save Fuseli, who, although a man greatly overrated in his day, had a
real sense of the potency of the invisible world, mainly, however, of
that portion of it concerned with arch-fiends, witches, demons, and
baleful omens.
In 1782 Blake married Catherine Bouchier, and set up housekeeping in Green
Street. It appears that he had been much in love with a girl called Pollie
Wood, who had jilted him. Going to stay at Richmond in a state of deep
depression, he made the acquaintance of Catherine Bouchier. Messrs. Ellis
and Yeats have added this detail to the first biographer's story. When she
first entered the room where he sat, she was overcome by such intense
emotion that she had to withdraw for awhile. She afterwards admitted that
at that moment she became suddenly aware that she was in the presence of
her future husband.
Small wonder that Blake felt an irresistible affinity for this charming
dark-eyed girl whose fervent susceptible spirit responded so mysteriously
to his own. No marriage was ever more happy. Catherine was of humble
origin, and practically no education, for at the time of her marriage she
was unable to read or write, but nevertheless she possessed the rare and
delicate qualities necessary for the mate of a man like Blake. She early
realized that the man she had married was no ordinary one, and to be of
service to her dear "Mr. Blake" (as she always called him with quaint
reverence), to enter into his thoughts, to smooth the path of his material
life, and to conform her young and unlessoned girlhood to his difficult
standard of plain living and high thinking, became her one absorbing
object.
There were a few rough passages in the early days of married life, which
Gilchrist indicates, but they soon disappeared. It was merely the friction
and heat given off, before the two strong natures were fused into a
perfect union. Catherine's nature appears to have been a compound of
ardent worship and pregnant sympathy. Never did a woman so forget herself
in reverencing, nigh worshipping, the man she had chosen to marry.
During an unusually long, and in many respects a peculiarly isolated life,
these two lived together, the one master mind and purpose informing both.
No words could do full justice to the beautiful life of Catherine Blake.
It is true that no ordinary man could have drawn such harmony from the
vivacious, impulsive, passionate nature of the girl. All the generous love
that her nature possessed she lavished on Blake, and her complete
absorption in him seems to have satisfied the maternal cravings which were
to have no other satisfaction, for William and Catherine had no children.
The work of caring for the few rooms which were all that Blake's means
allowed, and his ambition desired, for the housing of their bodies, this
Catherine did with the thoroughness of the true aesthete. She cooked,
sewed, swept, dusted, and washed, and yet found time to learn from her
husband how to read and write, the use of the graver, and even to colour
with neat and precise hand some of the prints he made. Added to this she
was soon able to read with intelligence the books he praised, and listened
wondering to the songs he made, finding them of a heavenly significance
and beauty; and when his tense nerves and superabundant physical energy
drove Blake forth to stretch his limbs and cool his brain in long country
walks of thirty, and occasionally forty miles at a stretch, Catherine went
with him, and cheerfully tramped along beside him, silent or responsive as
he set the mood.
Again, when in the night time visions appeared to his teeming
ever-inventive brain, and he must needs get up and write or draw while the
divine "mania" was upon him, then Catherine arose softly and sat beside
that wondrous husband in her white nightgown, her whole consciousness
hanging upon his least movement or utterance, and her whole being
thrilling sympathetically to those invisible presences which moved his
spirit. Like Mary, "she kept all these things in her heart and pondered
them."
Speaking of his wife, one cannot but recall that in Blake's mysterious and
unorthodox creed the doctrine of free love was a very favourite one, on
which in his poetry he was never tired of insisting. Yet he seems to have
desired freedom, only, as Mr. Swinburne finely shows, "for the soul's
sake." If love is bound, he argued, what merit is there in faithfulness?
Love, to be what love in perfect development should be,--to be what Love
in its very essence predicates,--must be free. Such a creed, proclaimed by
the lips of the most austere of men in matters sensual, seems to shadow
forth one dimly apprehended aspect of a truth, which may be realized
perhaps, in a future and more perfect state of society.
"In a myrtle shade," and "William Bond," are two among the poems in
Blake's MS. book, which have their origin in thoughts about free love.
The year after his marriage, 1782-83, Blake had to turn to engraving in
real earnest to pay for the necessities of the modest _menage_ in Green
Street. We find him engaged mainly in engraving plates after Stothard's
refined and graceful designs. In after years, when he was estranged from
Stothard, Blake used to say that many of these same designs contained
ideas stolen from himself. There can be small doubt that Stothard did owe
something to Blake's influence. Fuseli frankly declared that "Blake is
damned good to steal from," and accordingly adopted his ideas, and in one
instance, at least, a complete design.
A kind and appreciative couple, the Rev. Henry and Mrs. Mathew, received
Blake in their drawing-room about this time, and gave him an honoured
place among their guests. It was they who paid in part for the production
of his "Poetical Sketches," and Flaxman, who had always a strong
admiration of Blake's poetical genius, helped,--an act of beautiful
generosity in a young artist with his own way to make.
The "Poetical Sketches" are among the tenderest lyric notes uttered by
Blake, and their bird-like spontaneity and lilt recall, says Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, "the best period of English song-writing, whose rarest treasures
lie scattered among the plays of our Elizabethan dramatists." These wild
wood-notes gushing unselfconscious from a heart glad with youth and fair
visions are in strange contrast to the artificial, trifling, and
unsatisfying poetry of the age. Blake himself writes in the "Poem to the
Muses":
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few.
What can be said of that perfect lyric, written when Blake was but
fourteen, "My silks and fine array," and that other which I shall surely
be forgiven for quoting as it stands:
How sweet I roamed from field to field
And tasted all the summer's pride,
Till I the Prince of Love beheld
Who in the sunny beams did glide.
He show'd me lilies for my hair,
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet Maydews my wings are wet,
And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing,
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.
[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF EXPERIENCE,"
1794]
To a poetically sensitive mind, verses like these remain like a beautiful
echo in the memory, having a musical charm apart from the sense of the
words. Although in this little book it is my purpose to dwell mainly on
Blake's manifestation of himself as a designer and painter, I cannot avoid
lingering sometimes on his poetical expression. For the creative impulse
that clothed its thought in a garment of words is the same as that which
is embodied in plastic forms and symbolic colouring. Blake's invention had
two outlets, but was itself one stream of energy only.
The lines to the Evening Star are incomparably sweet and haunting:
Thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy brilliant torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves, and whilst thou drawest round
The curtains of the sky, scatter thy dew
On every flower that closes its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,
Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,
And then the lion glares through the dim forest,
The fleeces of our flocks are covered with
Thy sacred dew; protect them with thine influence.
The lingering subtle and most musical sweetness of such lines as those
quoted above, "Let thy west wind sleep on the lake; speak silence with thy
glimmering eyes, and wash the dusk with silver," can be surpassed by none
of the great masters of melody. So unaccustomed were the ears of the time
to such perfectly natural bursts of song, that the Rev. Henry Mathew
considered it necessary to apologize to the refined and fastidious for
calling attention to them, "hoping their poetic originality merits some
respite from oblivion." Blake might well seem strange to these _borne_
people, for he was no other than the herald and forerunner of the poetic
renaissance of the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In the Mathew's drawing-room, surrounded by a wondering group of
dilettanti, above whom he towered head and shoulders intellectually, he
was encouraged to sing his "Songs of Innocence," which he had already
written, though not produced, to his own music. Blake had then a mode of
musical expression as well as an artistic and a literary one, though no
record of it has been preserved. With these three keys he unlocked the
doors of materialism outwards, on to the vistas of God-thrilled Eternity.
In 1784 Blake exhibited two drawings in the Royal Academy, "War, unchained
by an Angel--Fire, Pestilence and Famine following," and "A Breach in the
City--the Morning after a Battle." It is obvious from these that his style
was already formed in all its strength and almost terrifying
individuality.
During this year Blake's father died, and William and Catherine returned
to Broad Street and took up their abode next to the paternal dwelling now
occupied by the elder brother James. James, though a Swedenborgian and
accounting himself a godly person, was also a busy seeker after this
world's good things, and seems to have had little in common with William,
though for some years friendly relations were maintained between them.
Blake set up a shop as printseller and engraver in Broad Street in company
with a man named Parker, whose acquaintance he had made in the old Basire
days, but it was a short-lived affair, and soon came to an end.
It was in this year that William's younger brother Robert became his
pupil. Nothing much can be discovered about the personality of Robert, but
from Blake's own writings and designs we are able to see how close a tie
of affection existed between these two brothers.
Robert only lived three years after becoming William's house-mate and
pupil. In his final illness it was not Catherine but William who nursed
him day and night untiringly, with passionate love and care; and when at
last the end came, Blake saw his brother's soul fare forth, clapping its
hands for joy, from the mortal tenement--a vision to bear fruit afterwards
in his designs for Blair's "Grave." Then he was beset with sheer physical
exhaustion, and going to bed, slept for three days and three nights. Many
years after we find him going back into this period of personal sorrow, to
extract therefrom comfort for Hayley, who had lost his son.
"I know," he writes to him, "that our deceased friends are more really
with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years
ago I lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in
the spirit, and see him in remembrance in the regions of my imagination. I
hear his advice and even now write from his dictate. Forgive me for
expressing to you my enthusiasm, which I wish all to partake of, since it
is to me a source of immortal joy, even in this world. May you continue to
be so more and more, and to be more and more persuaded that every mortal
loss is an immortal gain. The ruins of time build mansions in
Eternity":--from all of which it is easy to see that Robert's influence on
the soul of William augmented after his death.
In 1788 Blake removed from Broad Street to No. 28, Poland Street, which
lies in its immediate neighbourhood. A coolness may have sprung up
between James and William, for the brothers saw little of each other now.
The following characteristic story, taken from Mr. Tatham's MS., and
retold by Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, helps to draw in Blake's psychological
portrait.
In Poland Street Blake's windows looked over Astley's Yard,--Astley of
circus fame. One day on looking out he saw a boy limping up and down,
dragging a heavy block chained to his foot. It was a hobble used for
horses, and Blake, with his brain on fire and pity and rage tearing at his
heart, was soon down in the yard among the circus company. He gave them a
passionate speech on liberty, appealed to them as true men and Britons not
to punish a fellow-countryman in a manner that would degrade a slave, and
finally saw the crowd yield to his eloquence, and his point was gained.
The boy was loosed, and Blake returned to his own world of work and
vision.
Some hours after, Mr. Astley, who had been out during the incident
related, called on Blake, and stormed and raved at what he called his
interference. At first Blake was as angry as Astley, his blood was up, and
there seemed every prospect of a very violent quarrel. But suddenly, in
the midst of his anger, Blake remembered that the amelioration of the
boy's condition was his first object, and, quickly changing his tactics,
he so worked on the higher moral nature which Astley evidently possessed,
that he completely won him over to his views, and the two men
parted--friends. Ever after, however, as Messrs. Ellis and Yeats point
out, the chain remained with Blake as the symbol of cruel oppression and
slavery, and we shall see him using it in his designs again and again as
such.
[Illustration: PRINTED AND COLOURED PLATE FROM "SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789]
In 1790 he produced the "Songs of Innocence," printed and published, as
well as designed, engraved, and composed by himself. In the long and
romantic history of art, nothing is more strange than the story of how
this little book came into being. Blake was unknown to the world and had
no credit with publishers, nor had he the wherewithal to publish at his
own expense the poems which he had written and called "Songs of
Innocence." Yet he greatly desired to see them set forth in a book with
appropriate and significant designs. But how was this to be accomplished?
He pondered the matter long, till at last light and leading came. In the
silence of one midnight his dead brother Robert appeared to him and
instructed him as to the method--an entirely original one--which he should
use. The very next day, Blake being urgent to begin his work, his wife
went out early with half-a-crown (all the money they had in the world),
and laid out one and tenpence on the necessary material. And in faith and
gladness, relying on that mystical power in himself which took and used
his hand and eye and brain almost without his will, he began to make the
first of his lovely engraved and painted books. This is the alpha of a
long series of engraved books which issued from his hand at intervals for
some years. While in Poland Street he wrote, but did not publish till long
after, the "Ghost of Abel," in 1789 the "Book of Thel," in 1790 the
"Marriage of Heaven and Hell," and in 1791 a poem, the first of a
projected series of seven books, called "The French Revolution."
This so-called poem owed its birth to the fact that about this period
Blake became one of a literary, artistic, and political set who met at the
house of Johnson the publisher. At these gatherings Mary Wollstonecraft
arrayed her charms to storm the citadel of Fuseli's cynical heart,
unavailingly. Among other guests were Tom Paine, author of "The Rights of
Man," whom eventually Blake was the means of saving, by a timely word of
warning, from arrest in England. He judiciously advised his flight to
France, at the right moment for his safety. Godwin and Holcroft and
several revolutionary dreamers were members of this _coterie_. Blake's
enthusiasm was set all aglow by a philosophy which saw in the French
Revolution a great renovating process,--the fire to burn up the ignorance
and superstition and class boundaries of the ancient order, the
introduction of a new reign of righteousness and peace.
In effect, this new philosophy which fired the imagination of Blake had a
basis of materialism and violence which would have found no answering
response in his soul, had he sought to investigate it. His sympathy with
the group was intellectual, and with the higher manifestations of its
creed alone. It led to no political action. He had far other work to do
than that of a political agitator, but all expansive doctrines which made
for liberty and individuality fired the imagination and fed the intellect
of Blake. Democracy was his ideal, and democratic virtues won his
admiration; indeed, he dared to flaunt the "_bonnet rouge_" of liberty in
London streets in this agitated period, but after the Days of Terror in
'92 he tore off the white cockade and never again donned the Cap of
Liberty. But if his work was not to be in the political arena, he was in
his own way hastening the coming of that better and more immaterial
kingdom which these young liberators only half conceived.
In 1792 died the great leader of English art, Sir Joshua Reynolds. His
work, concerned as it was with the exquisite graces of this passing world,
had nothing to say to Blake, who regarded it in the light of his own
artistic standpoint, with positive aversion. It often happens that a man
who feels it his burning mission to work out and reveal some hitherto
neglected or unseen aspect of truth, does so at the cost of a
one-sidedness which is a necessary defect of his quality. Blake could no
more appreciate Sir Joshua--at least at this stage of his being--than Sir
Joshua could appreciate Blake. The veteran Reynolds once told him, when a
young man, "to work with less extravagance and more simplicity, and to
correct his drawing." Blake never got over that. We can imagine the
suppressed heat with which he listened choking to the advice of the
popular artist who was so utterly ignorant of his aims and ideals. To us,
who may enter into the soul of each, it is given to realize that they, and
all the company of the world's great artists, have furthered the true work
of art; have all helped, and are helping, according to their gifts and in
their degree, to rear the walls and set with windows and crown with
battlements and towers, the palace of beauty for the soul of man to dwell
in with delight and worship. That the workers have not always recognized
each other is matter for regret, though it is scarcely perhaps to be
wondered at, seeing that each is set on emphasizing and relieving against
its background the one point which seems to him necessary and valuable.
The characteristic notes which Blake appended to Reynolds' "Discourses"
many years later, express much of his dislike. Truly, it is easy to
conceive of a mind offering nothing but delight and admiration to
Reynolds' practice, yet excited to a grave disapproval by much of his
theory, or what he states as his theory. For Reynolds actually taught that
genius--such as his own, for instance--was a state to be inducted into by
precept, and evolved through study, instead of being a thing of fire, a
tongue of flame from on high, set on a man as a seal, from which he cannot
escape. I am reminded of Rossetti here, who quite sincerely told Mr. Hall
Caine, "I paint by a set of unwritten but clearly-defined rules, which I
could teach to any man as systematically as you could teach arithmetic."
Ah! that such genius _might_ thus be taught!
However, Reynolds, his practice and theory alike, were by Blake swept into
a limbo of unconditional condemnation, though occasionally, in spite of
the prejudice he nursed against Sir Joshua, he flashed out notes of
emphatic approval, on certain utterances in the great man's "Discourses."
[Illustration: PAGE FROM "AMERICA, A PROPHECY," 1793
Printed in blue, from the Print Room copy]