(_Continued from_ p. 71.)
I venture to send you another Note regarding William Blake, claiming for
that humble individual the honour of being the pioneer in the establishment
of charity-schools in Britain, from which department of our social system
who can calculate the benefits accrued, and constantly accruing, to this
country!
We look in vain through the _Silver Drops_ of William Blake for any record
of an existing institution, such as he would have his "noble ladies" rear
at Highgate. Among the many incentives he uses to prompt the charitable, we
do not find him holding up for their example any model (unless it be "Old
Sutton's brave hospital"); in all his amusing "Charity-school Sticks," his
tone is that of a man trying to persuade people that the thing he proposes
is feasible. "Some of them," says the sanguine Blake, "have scarce faith
enough to believe in the success of this great and good design. Nay, your
brother Cornish himself," continues he, in addressing one of his ladies,
although full of good works, "would have persuaded me to lay it down" upon
the ground of its impracticability. The language of Blake is everywhere
advocating this "_new_ way of charity." "If it be _new_," says he to an
objector, "the more's the pity;" and, with reference to the possibility of
failure, he would thus shame them into liberality. Speaking of his "fine,
handsome, and well cloathed boys; not too fine, because they are the
ladies'!" our enthusiast adds to this _soft sawdur_:
"But now, if a year or two hence they should be grown, which God
forbid! poor ragged, half-starved, and no cloaths, country folks would
say, who ride or go that way, Were there not good ladies enough in and
about London to maintain _one_ little school?"
Here then is _prima facie_ evidence, I think, that my subject, poor crazy
William Blake, was the originator of one of the greatest social
improvements of modern times.
The charity-school movement had obtained a strong hold upon the public mind
early in the past century; but although I have sought for the name of Blake
through many books professing to give an account of the early history of
such institutions, I have not yet met with the slightest allusion to him,
his school, or his _Silver Drops_.
The superficial inquirer into the history of English charity-schools will
be told that the honour of the first erecting such, and caring for
destitute children, is popularly considered due to the parishes of St.
Botulph, Aldgate, and St. Margaret's, Westminster: and if he would farther
satisfy himself upon that point, he will see it claimed by the first named;
a slab in front of their schools, adjoining the Royal Mint, bearing an
inscription to the purport that it was the first Protestant charity-school,
erected by voluntary contributions in 1693.
If it comes to the earliest London school for poor children, perhaps the
Catholics take the lead; for we find that it was part of the tactics of the
Jesuits, in the reign of James II., to promote their design of subverting
the Protestant religion by infusing their Romish tenets into the minds of
the children of the poor by providing schools for them in the Savoy and
Westminster.
Blake says, with reference to this movement:
"That the scheme he was engaged upon was a good work, because it will
in some measure stop the mouths of Papists, who are prone to say, Where
are your works, and how few are your hospitals, and how small is your
charity, notwithstanding your great preaching?"
A remarkable little book, and a very fit companion for the _Silver Drops_
of William Blake, to which it bears a striking similarity, is the _Pietas
Hallensis_ of Dr. Franck. In this, the German divine relates, in a style
which bears more than an accidental resemblance to the work of the Covent
Garden Philanthropist, how, little by little, by importunity and
perseverance, he nursed his own charitable plans, of a like kind, into full
life and vigour; and both Drs. Woodward and Kennett endorse and command the
"miraculous footsteps of Divine Providence" in the labours of Dr. Franck.
"Could we," says Dr. Kennett, "trace the obscurer footsteps of our own
charity-schools, the finger of God would be as evidently in them." Why the
Bishop of Peterborough should be ignorant of these earlier efforts to the
same end in his own country, is somewhat marvellous. Franck began his
charitable work at Glaucha in 1698; while Blake was labouring to establish
his Highgate School in 1685. That Franck should know nothing about our
pioneer in charitable education, is probable enough; but that the English
divines I have mentioned, with Wodrow, Gillies, and a host of others,
should be unaware that the proceedings at Halle were only the counterpart
of those done fourteen years before by Blake in their own land, is
certainly surprising, and affords another proof of the proneness of Britons
to extol everything foreign to the neglect of what is native and at their
own doors.
Perhaps some of your readers will think I over-estimate the importance of
the question, whether the charity-school movement is of British or foreign
growth; or whether the honour of its application to the poor (for all
_charity_-schools are not for such) belongs to my subject William Blake, or
{436} some other philanthropic individual; if such there be, let them
repair to our Metropolitan Cathedral on the day of the annual assemblage of
the London charity children: and if, on contemplating the spectacle which
will there meet their eye, they do not think it an object of interest to
discover who, as Dr. Kennett says, "first cast in the _salt_ at the
fountain-head to heal the _waters_, and broke the ground that was before
barren," I pity them.
In concocting this Note, I have had before me the following:
1. Lysons's _Environs of London_, 1795, where will be found a short notice
of Blake. The author, following Gough, makes my subject a madman, and says
his scheme "failed after laying out 5000l. upon it."