_Blake’s Life in South Molton Street and Fountain
Court--Acquaintance with Linnell and Varley--Drawings
of Visionary Heads--Miscellaneous Works in Private
Collections--Illustrations of “Job”--Work as an
Engraver--Acquaintance with Crabb Robinson--Illustrations of
Dante--Declining health and death--General observations--His
principal Biographer and Critics._
Very little is known of Blake’s life for several years after his
exhibition. William Carey, a rare example of disinterestedness among
picture-dealers, for he praised Blake enthusiastically without having
dealt with him, says in his exposition of West’s _Death on the Pale
Horse_ (1817), “So entire is the uncertainty in which he is involved
that after many inquiries I meet with some in doubt whether he is
still in existence. But I have accidentally learned since I commenced
these remarks that he is now a resident in London.” He was, in fact,
continuing to live on his second floor in South Molton Street, poor,
but content, subsisting from day to day by hack work as an engraver,
and the occasional sale of a water-colour design or a coloured copy
of one of his books, but nowise squalid, abject, or destitute. He
was no longer able to publish on his own account as of old, and the
poems which he continued to produce abundantly, all of which have
perished, met with the reception which was to be expected from earthly
publishers. Blake smiled in pity, assured that, in his own figurative
language, they were handsomely printed and bound in heaven, and eagerly
perused by spiritual intelligences. “I should be sorry,” he afterwards
said to Crabb Robinson, “if I had any earthly fame, for whatever
natural glory a man has is so much taken from his spiritual glory.”
He certainly had not thought so when he published his catalogue; but
there is no question of his perfect sincerity when he added, “I wish
to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art.” Though he had said
“Thought is act: Christ’s acts were nothing to Cæsar’s if this is not
so”; so intense was his own devotion to labour that for two years he
never quitted his lodging, except (for the ridiculous will intrude
where it is not wanted--imps grin in the cells of anchorites--) for
a pot of porter. Even while he engraved he read, as the plate-marks
on his books attest. Flaxman, his steady friend from youth, found him
some work in engraving, and praised him in conversation. “But Blake’s a
wild enthusiast, isn’t he?” “Some think _me_ an enthusiast,” answered
Flaxman, who was, in truth, more than half a Swedenborgian.
From this hermit’s existence Blake once more emerges, in 1818, into
comparative publicity through the intimacy he formed with a young
painter of promise, which he was destined to more than redeem. This
was John Linnell, who was introduced to him by Mr. George Cumberland,
of Bristol, an enlightened patron of art. At this time Linnell was
largely engaged in portrait painting, and the plate of the portrait
selected here for reproduction, that of Wilson Lowry, Esq., appears to
have been worked upon by both him and Blake, bearing the name of each.
Linnell, though neither gentle nor mystical, lived much in the world
of the spirit, and, without sharing Blake’s peculiarities, was rather
attracted than repelled by them. Within a few days after making Blake’s
acquaintance he had found him work to the amount of fifteen guineas,
and gradually introduced him to patrons, including Sir Thomas Lawrence,
a great gentleman as well as a fine painter, who took the notice of
Blake which it became him to take in his position as President of the
Royal Academy. Blake never encountered hostility from artists of true
eminence. Reynolds advised him wisely, though he would not think so.
Lawrence patronised him; and Flaxman, Fuseli, Stothard, Linnell were,
so far as he permitted them, real friends. Within a few years Linnell
had introduced him to a younger circle, ready in a measure to sit at
his feet, and the rejected stone was honourably built into the corner.
Of these we shall have to speak afterwards, but one important intimacy
mainly belongs to the period of 1818-21. This was his acquaintance
with John Varley, famed as one of the fathers of English water-colour
painting, but even more renowned as an astrologer. Indeed, some of
the stories told of his successful predictions are less startling to
the uninitiated than to astrologers themselves, who cannot comprehend
on what principle of the art they could be made. They certainly were
not arrived at by vision or revelation, for the good Varley was a most
unspiritual personage, the very antipodes of seer or anchorite, big,
sanguine, jovial, and everlastingly in the claws of the bailiffs.
Astrology, therefore, a study which, with all its fascination for an
imaginative mind, requires nothing but observation and calculation, was
the only occult science open to him; for magic, although a diabolical
pursuit, occasionally demands an amount of fasting inconvenient even
for a saint. Varley would have wished to go further, and finding the
perception of visions inconsistent with his own corporeal and spiritual
constitution, was delighted to make the acquaintance of one who to this
end needed but to open his eyes. He speedily developed the practical
idea that Blake should depict the spiritual entities which he beheld.
Blake forthwith set to work, and ere long the portfolios of Varley and
Linnell were enriched with those ghosts of fleas, portraits of Edward
the Third, and men who built the pyramids, which are better known to
many than anything he ever did, and are assuredly no mean examples of
his imaginative power. “All,” says Gilchrist, “are marked by a decisive
portrait-like character, and are evidently literal portraits of what
Blake’s imaginative eye beheld.”[7] This is corroborated by the account
of Varley, who says, “On hearing of this spiritual apparition of a
Flea, I asked him if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he
saw. He instantly said, ‘I see him now before me.’ I therefore gave
him a paper and a pencil, with which he drew the portrait of which a
facsimile is given in this number [of Varley’s _Zodiacal Physiognomy_].
I felt convinced by his mode of proceeding that he had a real image
before him; for he left off and began on another part of the paper to
make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit
having opened he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch
till he had closed it.” It was “an idea with the force of a sensation,”
as Peacock’s philosopher classifies the apparition in _Nightmare
Abbey_. Shelley, who also saw visions, has enriched his note-books
with similar delineations of imaginary figures, generally vague and
careless, but sometimes very Blake-like. One of Linnell’s most spirited
studies from life, engraved in Story’s biography, represents Blake and
Varley in discussion.
[Illustration: _Portrait of Wilson Lowry. By John Linnell. Engraved by
Blake and Linnell._]
These drawings were mostly executed in 1819 and 1820. In the latter
year Blake lost his chief patron Butts, whose walls, indeed, had
become so crowded with his works that he had almost ceased to give him
commissions. The greater part of the collection was dispersed in 1852,
but the zeal of Mr. W. M. Rossetti traced most of its constituents out,
and reference to his notes, printed in the second volume of Gilchrist’s
biography, will enable us to convey some faint notion of its manifold
opulence. Putting the _Job_ aside for the present, the most remarkable
appear to be the nine designs for _Paradise Lost_, the property of
Mr. J. C. Strange, in which, says Mr. Rossetti, Blake is king of all
his powers of design, draughtsmanship, conception, spiritual meaning,
and impression. Another set, belonging to Mr. Aspland, of Liverpool,
omits one subject and adds four. Another set of Miltonic designs for
_Comus_, rather distinguished by grace than grandeur, has been recently
published by Mr. Quaritch. Another set of no less than one hundred and
eighteen designs for Gray’s works, in 1860 in the possession of the
Duke of Hamilton, are reputed to rank among Blake’s finest productions,
but have not been inspected by any one competent to describe them.
Among others especially commended by Mr. Rossetti are _The Sacrifice
of Jephthah’s Daughter_, _Ruth_, _The Judgment of Paris_, _The Wise
and Foolish Virgins_, _Fire_, _Famine_, _Samson subdued_, _The Finding
of Moses_, _Moses erecting the Brazen Serpent_, _The Ghost of Samuel
appearing to Saul_, _The Entombment_, _The Sealing of the Sepulchre_,
_The Angel rolling the Stone from the Sepulchre_, _The River of Life_,
and _Hecate_. To these may be added _The Resurrection of the Dead_, now
in the British Museum, reproduced by us. Many others, not belonging to
the Butts collection, are described with equal enthusiasm; and, apart
from all questions of technical execution, usually splendid, but lost
upon those who have not access to the original works, it may be said
that the conceptions, as described by Mr. Rossetti, would be impossible
to one unendowed with the highest artistic imagination, and that the
body is worthy of the spirit.
[Illustration: _The Resurrection of the Dead. From a water-colour
drawing by W. Blake. British Museum._]
Prominent among these designs are the set of illustrations to _Job_,
now the property of the Earl of Crewe. A duplicate set belonged to
Mr. Linnell, who, “discounting as it were,” says Gilchrist, “Blake’s
bill on posterity when no one else would,” commissioned this from
him, tracing the outlines from Butt’s copy himself, and handing
them over to Blake to complete. This was done in September, 1821,
and when the drawings were completed in 1823 Linnell went further
still, and commissioned Blake to engrave them, a stroke which has
probably effected more than anything else for the artist’s fame, for
the drawings which have set him on such a pinnacle, if unengraved,
would have remained virtually unknown to the world. The terms also
were liberal. Blake was to receive £100 for the twenty-two plates and
£100 more out of the profits. When the publication barely covered
its expenses, Linnell, reflecting that the plates remained in his
possession in virtue of the agreement, not unreasonably but very
handsomely allowed Blake £50 more. But for this manna from heaven
Blake’s last years would have been spent in engraving pigs and poultry
after Morland. Linnell, who was himself an excellent engraver, further
conferred an important benefit upon him by making him acquainted with
the best style of Italian engraving. Blake proved a docile pupil at
sixty-five, and his plates to _Job_ are not only technically the best
he ever executed, but occupy an important place in the history of the
art.
The glory of _Job_, however, is not in the engraving, but in the
invention, which, beautiful in the soft and idyllic passages, rises
into sublimity when the theme appeals strongly to the creative
imagination. It is especially remarkable as being one of the very
few instances of a worthy representation of the Almighty. The tender
humanities of Christian art are absent: all is awful, Hebraic, and
strictly monotheistic. Among the most remarkable designs may be
noted that where the exulting fiend pulls down the mansion upon
Job’s sons and daughters (reproduced here); the frantic speed of the
messenger of evil, who bursts out with his tale before he is well
within hearing, while another follows with equal haste hard upon him,
and the uninterested sheep graze on undisturbed; the terrible scene
where Satan, a figure repeated in essentials from works of earlier
date, smites the prostrate Job with sore boils; Eliphaz besieged with
phantoms, to all seeming not less real than himself (also given here);
the morning stars singing together; the downfall of the wicked; and
the Lord answering Job out of the whirlwind. Passages even of the
less striking designs often have a singular fascination, such as the
night-piercing stars in the Elihu scene, which would be impressive
in the absence of any human figure; Behemoth and Leviathan, the _ne
plus ultra_ of grotesque grandeur, which we have also given; and
the bowed backs of Job’s accusing friends when the Lord blesses
him.[8] On the whole, though others of Blake’s designs may be more
transcendent of ordinary human faculty, he has scarcely executed
anything displaying all his faculties so well combined and in such
perfect equilibrium; and, were it necessary to rest his fame upon one
set of works, this would probably be selected. As a scriptural theme
it appealed with especial strength to English sympathies, and having
been selected by Gilchrist for reproduction, it is more widely known
than any of his works except the illustrations to Blair’s _Grave_.
“The original water-colour designs,” Rossetti says, “are much larger
than the engravings, and generally pale in colour, with a less full
and concentrated effect than the engravings, and by no means equal to
them in power and splendid decorative treatment of the light and shade.
On the other hand, they are often completer and naturally freer in
expression, and do not exhibit a certain tendency to over-sturdiness of
build and physiognomy in the figures.” Fine as is the figure of Satan
in _The Destruction of Job’s Sons and Daughters_, it is, Mr. Rossetti
thinks, much finer in the water colour. On the other hand, “the effect
of sublimity and multitude in _When the morning stars sang together_
is centupled in the engraving by adding the upraised arms of two other
angels to right and left, passing out of the composition.” The whole
account suggests how desirable it would be to have many of Blake’s
unpublished water colours translated into black and white, could
engraver or etcher of the needful force be found.
[Illustration: _Woodcut from Thornton’s Pastoral._]
In 1821 Blake had performed another work of moment, his first and
last wood-engravings. These were to illustrate Phillips’s imitation
of Virgil’s first pastoral, republished by Dr. Thornton, a physician
and botanist. Blake was a novice in this branch of art, and the cuts
answer to Dr. Thornton’s own description of them: “They display less
of art than of genius.” But nothing could more effectually confirm the
principle enunciated by their critic in the _Athenæum_: “Amid all
drawbacks there exists a power in the work of the man of genius which
no one but himself can utter fully.” Rude as they are, their force is
extraordinary; few things can be more truly magical than the glimpse
of distant sea in the second of those engraved by Gilchrist. At the
same time they are not in the least Virgilian, and in this respect
form an instructive contrast with the exquisite though unfinished
Virgilian illustrations of Samuel Palmer. Palmer, though putting in
a cypress now and then as a tribute to _couleur locale_, provides
Virgil substantially with the same style of illustration as he had
been producing all his life for other ends, and yet this seems as
appropriate to the text as Blake’s is discrepant. It is interesting
to speculate what effect an Italian residence of two or three years,
such as Palmer had enjoyed, would have produced upon Blake beyond the
inevitable one of dissipating his monstrous delusions about Italian
artists. He would probably have gone chiefly with the view of studying
Michael Angelo, but we suspect that the influences of Italian landscape
would in the long run have proved fully as potent.
In 1821 Blake removed from South Molton Street to Fountain Court,
Strand, near the Savoy, where he occupied two rooms on the first floor.
The reason may have been that the house was kept by a brother-in-law
of Mrs. Blake’s named Baines, the only trace we have of any connection
with his wife’s family. Economy too may have had its influence; his
means were very low, not yet improved by the donation of £25 he
received from the Academy next year, or his arrangement with Linnell in
the year following. At the worst, however, the rooms were always clean
and neat, thanks to Mrs. Blake’s industry and devotion; and Blake’s
manner always had the simplicity and dignity of a gentleman. That his
circumstances improved was almost entirely the doing of Linnell, who
not only provided for his wants by commissions, but made him what
his genius had never made him, the patriarch of a band of admirers,
almost disciples. Coming frequently to visit Linnell at Hampstead,
Blake fell in with a group of young men who resorted thither, four of
whom at least--Samuel Palmer, Edward Calvert, George Richmond, and
F. O. Finch--became artists of great distinction. One characteristic
these young men had in common: they were as far as possible from the
theory of art for art’s sake, but only valued art as the outward and
visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace of consecration to the
Power behind Nature. The biographies of Palmer and Calvert disclose
the priestlike spirit in which they wrought, a spirit akin to that
of their pre-Raphaelite successors, but apparently less impregnated
with the ordinary atmosphere of the studio. These were just the men to
treat the aged Blake as the antediluvian youth ought to have treated
the aged Jubal; and the patriarchal influence is visible both in their
writings and their works, not always to the advantage of the latter,
if we may judge by the examples preserved of Palmer’s early labours.
But all seemed fair in the light of fond retrospect. Twenty-eight years
after Blake’s death Samuel Palmer addressed a letter to Mr. Gilchrist,
long and full of interesting particulars relating to Blake’s opinions
on art; but the gist of the estimate of the man is conveyed in few
words. “In him you saw at once the Maker, the Inventor; one of the
few in any age; a fitting companion for Dante. He was energy itself,
and shed around him a kindling influence, an atmosphere of life, full
of the ideal. He was a man without a mask; his aim single, his path
straightforwardness, and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and
happy.”
[Illustration: _The Destruction of Job’s Sons and Daughters. From the
“Book of Job.” By W. Blake._]
A very important witness to Blake’s demeanour and opinions in his later
years is Henry Crabb Robinson the diarist, whom we have already met
as a visitor to Blake’s exhibition, and who had made him the subject
of an essay in a German periodical. Robinson was the right man in the
right place, not being a mystic or enthusiast to fall down at Blake’s
feet, nor yet a man of the world to deride him as a visionary, but
an inquisitive observer of great intellectual range and most kindly
and tolerant disposition, ready to allow that things might exist of
which his philosophy had not dreamed, and whom abnormal opinions,
if held in evident sincerity, might startle but could hardly shock.
“It is strange,” says he, “that I who have no imagination, nor any
power beyond that of a logical understanding, should yet have a great
respect for religious mystics.” Thrown into Blake’s company in 1825,
he has recorded his conversations with him at considerable length in
his delightful diary, as yet but partially published. His description
of Blake’s “interesting appearance” agrees with that of his own
circle. “He is pale, with a Socratic countenance, and an expression
of great sweetness, though with something of languor about it except
when animated, and then he has about him an air of inspiration. The
tone and manner are incommunicable. There are a natural sweetness and
gentility about him which are delightful.” Having heard of Blake’s
visions, Robinson was not surprised to find him asserting that the
visionary gift was innate in all men, and only torpid for want of
cultivation; but he must have had much ado to digest such statements as
that the world was flat, that Wordsworth was a Pagan, and that “what
are called the vices in the natural world are the highest sublimities
in the spiritual world.” Not understanding that by atheism Blake
meant, in his own words, “whatever assumes the reality of the natural
and unspiritual world,” Robinson was naturally aghast when Locke was
classed with atheists, and ventured what must have appeared to him the
conclusive rejoinder that Locke had written in defence of Christianity.
Blake, who probably understood Robinson’s definition of atheism as
little as Robinson did his, “made no reply.” Some of Blake’s remarks
are well worthy of preservation. “Art is inspiration. When Michael
Angelo, or Raphael, or Mr. Flaxman does any of his fine things, he does
them in the spirit.” “Irving is a _sent_ man. But they who are sent go
further sometimes than they ought.” “Dante saw devils where I see none.”
[Illustration: _With Dreams upon my Bed thou scarest me. From the “Book
of Job.” By W. Blake._]
Dante must have been much in Blake’s thoughts just then, for Robinson
found him occupied with the long series of illustrations of the poet
commissioned by Linnell, the last important work of his life. The
history of the commission is thus related by Linnell’s biographer,
Mr. Story. “Although the _Job_ had been paid for, Linnell continued
to give him money weekly. Blake said, ‘I do not know how I shall ever
repay you.’ Linnell replied, ‘I do not want you to repay me. I am only
too glad to be able to serve you. What I would like, however, if you
do anything for me, is that you should make some designs for Dante’s
_Inferno_, _Purgatorio_, and _Paradiso_.’ Blake entered upon the work
with alacrity, concurrently with the engraving of the _Job_ designs,
and the two together occupied the old man for the rest of his life.”
During all this period Linnell was remitting Blake money, as the
latter’s notes in acknowledgment prove. Linnell undoubtedly acquired
the designs at a low price, but immediately upon Blake’s death he
endeavoured to dispose of them for the benefit of the widow. Failing in
this he kept them, never attempting to make anything by them; and they
are still in the possession of his family.
Blake studied Italian to qualify himself more effectually for his task,
and is said to have acquired it; when Robinson saw him, however, at
an early stage of the commission it is true, he was working by the
aid of Cary’s English version. He executed no less than ninety-eight
drawings, several of which were left in an unfinished state. Seven have
been engraved. The merits of the series have been variously estimated.
Mr. Rossetti considers them “on the whole a very fine series, though
not uniformly equal in merit.” Mr. Yeats, so well qualified by his own
imaginative gift to enter into the merit of Blake’s work, thinks them
the finest of all his productions. Robinson, who saw Blake at work
upon them, says, “They evince a power I should not have anticipated of
grouping, and of throwing grace and interest over conceptions monstrous
and horrible.” For our own part, we must regretfully admit that when
we saw them at the Old Masters’ exhibition the monstrosity and horror
appeared more evident than the grace and interest. We could not deem
Dante’s conceptions adequately rendered; the colour, too, often seemed
harsh and extravagant. Blake went on working upon them until his death,
when Mrs. Blake sent them to Linnell. They thus escaped the fate
of Blake’s other artistic and literary remains left in his widow’s
possession, which after her death were appropriated, apparently without
any legal authority, by a person named Tatham, who had been much
about Blake in his later years, and who ultimately destroyed them in
deference to the mandate of a religious sect with which he had become
connected![9]
[Illustration: _Behemoth and Leviathan. From the “Book of Job.” By W.
Blake._]
The end was now near. During 1827 Blake’s health greatly failed from
catarrh and dysentery, and he could no longer go up to Hampstead to
see Linnell. Linnell wished him to quit the damp neighbourhood of the
river, and live in his own house in Cirencester Place, part only of
which he used as a studio. But Blake said, “I cannot get my mind out
of a state of terrible fear at such a step.” He also said, “I am too
much attached to Dante to think much of anything else.” One of his last
works was the colouring of _The Ancient of Days_ for the elder Tatham,
who paid him at a higher rate than he was accustomed to receive. Blake
accordingly worked his hardest, and when it was finished “threw it
from him, and with an air of exulting triumph exclaimed, ‘There, that
will do, I cannot mend it.’” Later still he exclaimed to his wife,
“You have ever been an angel to me, I will draw you,” and produced a
sketch, “interesting, but not like.” On August 12 he died, “composing
and uttering songs to his Maker.” He was buried in Bunhill Fields, in a
grave which cannot now be identified. It is little to the honour of his
countrymen that no public memorial of him should exist. A better one
could not be than his own _Death’s Door_ in the illustration to Blair’s
_Grave_, treated as a bas-relief with the necessary modifications.
The artist whose life had been spent in a condition so little remote
from penury did not leave a single debt, and the accumulated stock of
his works sufficed to support his widow in comfort for the four years
for which she survived him. Friends, indeed, aided, Linnell and Tatham
successively giving her house-room, and others assiduously recommending
her stores of drawings to wealthy patrons. She died in Upper Charlotte
Street, Fitzroy Square, and was buried beside her husband in Bunhill
Fields.
* * * * *
The artistic processes used by Blake are a subject of considerable
discussion. Notwithstanding his constant description of his pictures
as “frescoes,” it seems certain that he never resorted to fresco in
the ordinary acceptation of the term. Linnell, who must have been
exceedingly familiar with his work, told Mr. Gilchrist: “He evidently
founded his claim to the name fresco on the material he used, which
was water-colour on a plaster ground (literally glue and whiting);
but he always called it either fresco, gesso, or plaster.” Linnell
added that when he himself obtained from Italy the first copy that
ever came to England of Cennino Cennini’s _Trattato della Pittura_,
a sixteenth-century treatise, edited in 1822 from the original MS.,
Blake, who was soon able to read it, “was gratified to find that he
had been using the same materials and methods in painting as Cennini
describes, particularly the carpenter’s glue.” “Unfortunately,” says
Linnell, “he laid this ground on too much like plaster to a wall,” and
when this was so applied to canvas or linen the picture was sure to
crack, and many of Blake’s best works have suffered great injury. Oil
he disliked and vituperated. The reason probably was that, contrary to
what might have been expected, his system of execution was by no means
bold and dashing, but deliberate and even slow. He drew a rough dotted
line with pencil, then with ink, then colour, filling in cautiously
and carefully. All the grand efforts of design, he thought, depended
on niceties not to be got at once. He seems, in fact, to have worked
very much in the spirit of the mediæval illuminators, and the general
aspect of a page of one of his Prophetical Books reminds us forcibly of
one of their scrolls. Whether any direct influence from them upon him
is traceable would be difficult to determine. Keats had evidently seen
illuminated manuscripts, and been deeply impressed by them; but nearly
forty years elapsed between the publication of the first of Blake’s
Prophetical Books and the composition of Keats’s _Eve of St. Mark_. In
one respect Blake certainly differed from the ancient miniaturists; he
wrought mainly from reminiscence, and disliked painting with his eye on
the object. His memory for natural forms must have been very powerful.
Blake is endowed in a very marked degree with the interest ascribed
by Goethe to _Problematische Naturen_, men who must always remain
more or less of a mystery to their fellows. In ancient times, and
perhaps in some countries at the present day, he would have been
accepted as a seer; in his own age and country the question was rather
whether he should be classed with visionaries or with lunatics. A
visionary he certainly was, and few will believe either that his
visions had any objective reality, or that he himself intended them
to be received merely as symbols. “You can see what I do, if you
choose,” he said to his friends. He thus confused fancy with fact;
unquestionably, therefore, he laboured under delusions. But delusions
do not necessarily amount to insanity, and, however Blake erred in
form, it may be doubted whether in essentials he was not nearer the
truth than most so-called poets and artists. Every poet and artist
worthy of the name will confess that his productions, when really good
for anything, are the suggestion of a power external to himself, of an
influence which he may to a certain extent guide, but cannot originate
or summon up at his will; and in the absence of which he is helpless.
In personifying this influence as the Muse, or howsoever he may prefer
to describe it, such an one is usually fully aware that, in obedience
to a law of the human mind, he is bestowing personality and visibility
upon what is actually invisible and impersonal, but not on that account
unreal. Some there are, however, whose perceptions are so lively, or
their power of dealing with abstractions so limited, that the mental
influences of which they are conscious appear to them in the light of
personalities. Such was Blake, and the peculiarity in him was probably
closely connected with the childlike disposition which rendered him
so amiable as a man. As a child it naturally never occurred to him to
question the reality of his visions, and he grew up without acquiring
the critical habit of mind which would have led him to do so. With him
“the vision splendid” did _not_
Die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Such a state of mind is quite compatible with sanity. The question is
not whether the person
Gives to airy nothings
A local habitation and a name,
but whether he allows his conduct to be actuated by them to the extent
of inverting the rules of right and wrong, wasting his substance,
or becoming offensive to others or dangerous to himself. It is even
possible to travel far in this direction without arriving at the
confines of insanity. Prince Polignac brought the monarchy of the
Restoration to ruin in deference to imaginary revelations from the
Virgin Mary, yet no court of law would ever have placed him under
restraint. With Blake not the faintest suggestion of such a thing
is possible. Except for one or two incidents, related upon doubtful
authority, he appears throughout his life in the light of an exemplary
citizen, and in his unselfishness and unworldliness contrasts with his
Sadducæan neighbours in a way that forbids us to call him mentally
diseased, though he may have been mentally warped. The value of his
mystical utterances is quite another question. The occasional splendour
of the poetry in which they are couched will not be disputed, any more
than their general confusion and obscurity. Commentators have striven
hard to elicit the sunbeam from the cucumber; we pass no judgment on
their efforts, further than may seem to be implied in the observation
that in our opinion the chief mission of Blake’s mystical poetry was to
be the vehicle of his finest and most characteristic art. His ideas,
many profound and worthy of close attention, may, we think, be more
advantageously collected from his prose aphorisms and the fragments
of his conversation; and in this respect he is by no means singular.
The one great achievement which unquestionably entitles him to the
distinction of an inspired man, is to have produced in boyhood, without
set purpose or any clear consciousness of what he was doing, lyrics
recalling the golden prime of English poetry, and instinct with a music
to which, since Chatterton was no more, no contemporary save Burns was
capable of making the slightest approach. It is true that reaction
against artifice and conventionality was in the air of the time, and
was already announced by evident symptoms. To compare, however, the
highly creditable efforts in this direction of even such poets as
Cowper and Mickle with the achievements of this stripling is to become
sensible at once of the difference between talent and inspiration.
Blake’s gifts and shortcomings as an artist are sufficiently revealed
by the examples of his work which accompany this essay. It need merely
be remarked here that, apart from the great army of artists of genius
who move on recognised lines, transmitting the succession from the age
of Zeuxis and Phidias to our own, there is, as it were, a parallel
column skirting it on the by-roads of art; and that at certain periods
of Art’s history the genius which has forsaken the more conspicuous
of her manifestations has seemed to take refuge with etchers, or
designers, or delineators of the life of the people. It has frequently
happened of late that men whose work was chiefly done for books and
periodicals, and who during their lives were scarcely regarded as
artists at all, have upon their deaths been deservedly exalted to very
high places. Blake is perhaps the most striking and remarkable example
of this class.
Blake’s peculiarities as a man, and the anecdotes of which he became
the subject, secured him earlier attention as artist and poet than
his works would have obtained on their own account. Not long after
his death he was made (1830) the subject of one of Allan Cunningham’s
_Lives of British Painters_, in the main a fair and impartial
biography, rather in advance of than behind its time. Cunningham,
however, possessed no sort of spiritual kinship with Blake, who found
his first really congenial commentator in a veteran philosopher, still
happily spared to us, Dr. James Garth Wilkinson, who in 1839, the
year of the first collected edition of Shelley’s poems, republished
_Songs of Innocence and Experience_ with an anonymous preface claiming
for Blake something like his proper position as a lyric poet, and
accompanied by judicious remarks upon his paintings. Dr. Wilkinson
would probably have expressed himself still more decidedly if he had
written a few years later, but the movement towards the exaltation of
the more spiritual aspects of English poetry as typified in Wordsworth
and Shelley was as yet but incipient, and the stars of Tennyson and
Browning were hardly above the horizon. Little further seems to
have been done for Blake, until, about 1855, the late Mr. Alexander
Gilchrist began to write his biography, published in 1862, a labour
of love and diligence which will never be superseded, especially
since the revision it has received in the definitive edition of 1880,
brought out by his widow. The value of Gilchrist’s labours is greatly
enhanced by the accompanying illustrations, which allow a fairly
adequate conception to be formed of Blake’s pictorial genius, by the
reprint of much of his most characteristic literary work, and by the
copious descriptions of his drawings by Mr. W. M. Rossetti and Mr. F.
Shields. Since Gilchrist wrote, Mr. Swinburne (1868) has investigated
Blake’s thought with special reference to its Pantheistic tendency, and
Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, in a most comprehensive work in three volumes
(1891), including additional biographical particulars and copious
illustrations, which comprise the previously unpublished “Vala,” have
striven to present Blake’s mysticism as a coherent system of thought.
Valuable monographs are also prefixed to the editions of Blake’s
poems by Rossetti (1883) and Yeats (1893), and to the selection from
his literary works by Mr. Housman (1893), this last perhaps on the
whole, after Gilchrist’s biography, the most desirable possession for
the literary student of Blake. Of the numerous detached essays upon
Blake the most important, perhaps, are that by the late Mr. Smetham,
republished in his Essays, and in the second volume of Gilchrist’s
biography, and that by James Thomson, author of _The City of Dreadful
Night_, appended to his _Shelley, a Poem_ (1884).
It is exceedingly difficult to obtain a proper idea of Blake as an
artist, from the extent to which his designs depend upon colouring, and
the great inequality of this colouring, which is often not his own. In
Mr. Gilchrist’s opinion, the copy of _The Song of Los_, in the Print
Room of the British Museum, and a volume of miscellaneous designs, in
the same collection, represent him with adequate fairness; and these
fortunately are public property. The finest specimens of his work
seen by his biographer are apparently in the collection of the Earl
of Crewe, and therefore not generally accessible. Those belonging to
private collectors must of necessity be continually changing hands,
and few students have the time or the opportunity to make the thorough
investigation of them accomplished by Mr. Rossetti. Fortunately the
illustrations in Gilchrist’s biography, where the whole of the _Job_
series is reissued, suffice to establish Blake’s genius as a designer,
even though destitute of the charm of colour. Mr. Bell Scott has
executed effective etchings after him; Mr. Quaritch has republished the
drawings for _Comus_; in 1876 the _Songs of Innocence and Experience_
and the Prophetic Books up to _Los_ were reprinted together, but
only to the extent of a hundred copies, nor was the execution very
satisfactory. It cannot be said that Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have
entirely overcome the difficulties of reproduction; yet, perhaps, for
those unable to obtain access to the copies tinted by the artist, or
even to the uncoloured plates in the original edition, nothing so
well displays the wilder and more weird aspects of his genius as the
reprints in their third volume, especially those from _Jerusalem_.
Blake’s character and works will long remain the subject of criticism
and speculation, for the world does not easily forgo its interest in
what Goethe calls “problematic natures.” By another famous saying
of Goethe’s he cannot profit, “He who has sufficed his own age has
sufficed all ages,” nor can he be reckoned among those who have been
in advance of their age, except in those exquisite early songs which
died away before the actual arrival of the better time. But it would
not be too much to say of him that he revealed possibilities, both in
poetry and painting, which without him we should hardly have suspected,
and which remain an unexhausted seed-field of inspiration for his
successors. It is labour lost to strive to make him transparent, but
even where he is most opaque
Sparks spring out of the ground,
Like golden sand scattered upon the darkness.
Nor is the general tendency of art towards a world of purity,
harmony, and joy unrepresented in him; sometimes this even seems the
conclusion to which all else is merely subservient, as in the series of
illustrations to Job, the ideal representation of his own history.
[Illustration: _Sweeping the Parlour in the Interpreter’s House._]
FOOTNOTES
[1] November 20 has been stated as the date, but the above is shown
to be correct by the horoscope drawn for November 28, 7.45 P.M. in
_Urania, or the Astrologer’s Chronicle_, 1825, published therefore in
Blake’s lifetime, and undoubtedly derived from Varley.
[2] If, however, the “Kitty” of “I love the jocund dance” is Catherine
Boucher, this poem at least must be later than 1780, unless the name
has been substituted for another, as has been known to happen.
[3] As for example “Man lies by a rock-bound shore, his thoughts flying
forth from him in likeness of delicate airy figures driven by the wind
to perish in the endless sea as soon as born.” In the absence of the
drawings themselves such descriptions affect us like the projects for
unwritten stories in Hawthorne’s _American Note Book_.
[4]
Poetis nos laetamur tribus,
Pye, Petro Pindar, parvo Pybus;
Si ulterius ire pergis,
Adde his Sir James Bland Burges.
[5] Blake is seldom detected in borrowing, but when he tells us that
Milton’s shadow fell
Precipitant, loud thundering, into the sea of Time and space,
he is clearly, though perhaps unconsciously, reminiscent of Dyer’s
Towers
Tumbling all precipitate down dashed,
Rattling around, loud thundering to the Moon.
[6] The same remark is the subject of one of the finest passages of
Lucretius:--
Praeterea, magnae legiones quom loca cursu
Camporum complent, belli simulacra cientes,
Fulgur ibi ad cœlum se tollit, totaque circum
Aere renidescit tellus, subterque virum vi
Excitur pedibus sonitus, clamoreque montes
Icti rejectant voces ad sidera mundi;
Et circumvolitant equites, mediosque repente
Tramittunt, valido quatientes impete, campos;
Et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus, unde
Stare videntur, et in campis consistere fulgur.
[7] Not always without assistance from the eyes of others; for the
portrait of Edward the First is clearly a reminiscence of that which in
Blake’s time adorned Goldsmith’s History.
[8] It is observable that Job’s wife, so disadvantageously treated in
Scripture, is by Blake represented as the sufferer’s loving companion
throughout. This was probably out of tenderness to Mrs. Blake, from
whom, indeed, upon a comparison between her portrait as a young woman
and the ideal representation of the Patriarch’s spouse, his model for
the latter would seem to have been derived; but if so the inference
seems justified that Blake regarded the story of Job as emblematic of
his own history.
[9] It must be now about thirty-five years since we received a visit
from this person; how he had found us out we cannot recollect. He
stated that he had lived by painting miniatures, and, having been
deprived of his customers by photography, proposed to devote himself
to historical painting, to the great prospective advantage of British
art. He considered his forte to be the delineation of bare arms, and
wished to be recommended to a subject which would afford scope for the
exercise of this department of the pictorial faculty. We suggested
the interment of the young princes in the Tower; he thanked us and
departed; and we saw no more of him. He admitted having parted with
all the relics of Blake that had been in his possession, but sought to
convey that they had been sold, not destroyed, which may be partly true.
INDEX
“America,” 29, 38, 40, 52
“Appeal to the Public,” 52
Aspland, Mr., 62
“Babylonian Woman, The”, 52
Bain, Thomas, 29
“Bard, The”, 56
Basire, James, 8
Blair’s _Grave_, Illustrations to, 49, 51, 52, 72
Blake, Catherine, 10, 18, 20, 29, 66, 70
Blake, James, 7, 8, 16
Blake, John, 8
Blake, Robert, 8, 17, 18
Blake, William;
his birth and parentage, 7;
sent to Pars School, 8;
apprenticed to Basire, 9;
marries Catherine Boucher, 10;
settles in Poland Street, 18;
removes to Lambeth, 28;
his sojourn at Felpham and intercourse with Hayley, 47;
returns to London, 49;
his friendship with Linnell and Varley, 59, 60;
his death, 72
Bognor, 41
“Book of Ahaniah, The”, 29
Boucher, Catherine see Blake, Catherine
British Museum, 22, 62, 77
Butts, Thomas, 29, 43, 44, 52, 61, 62
Calvert, Edward, 66
“Canterbury Pilgrims, The”, 52, 56
Carey, William, 58
Cennini, Cennino, 73
“Christ in the Sepulchre,” 54
“Comus,” 62
Cowper, William, 41, 43, 44, 75
Crewe, Earl of, 38, 46, 62, 77
Cromek, Robert, 49, 51, 52
Cumberland, George, 59
Cunningham, Allan, 30, 56, 76
Dante, Illustrations to, 69, 70
“Death on the Pale Horse,” 58
Descriptive Catalogue by Blake, 52
Deville, 38
Eartham, 41
“Edward III.,” 13, 31
Ellis and Yeats, Messrs., 8, 18, 30, 32, 33, 35, 38, 45, 51, 54, 70,
76, 77
“Europe,” 31
“Everlasting Gospel, The”, 33
Felpham, 27, 41, 42, 44, 45, 48
Finch, G. O., 66
Flaxman, 15, 28, 41, 42, 59, 69
Fuseli, 27, 44, 59
“Gates of Paradise, The”, 29, 30, 52
Gilchrist, Alexander, 9, 14, 16, 19, 27, 29, 31, 38, 46, 49, 51, 52,
54, 60-62, 65, 66, 68, 73, 76
Godwin, William, 27
Gray, Illustrations to works of, 62
Hamilton, Duke of, 62
Hayley, William, 18, 42-44, 49
Holcroft, 27
Housman, 48, 77
“Jacob’s Dream,” 52
“Jerusalem,” 42, 45, 46, 48
Job, Illustrations to the Book of, 62, 64, 70, 77, 78
Johnson (publisher), 27, 44
“Joseph of Arimathæa,” 9
Lamb, Charles, 20, 51
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 21, 59
Linnell, John, 30, 59, 60, 62, 64, 69, 72, 73
“Los, The Song of”, 29
Malkin, 9, 52
“Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The”, 29, 36
Matthews, 15
“Milton,” 46, 48, 49
“Morning,”, 9
“Nelson guiding Leviathan,” 56
O’Neil, 8
Ossian, 31
Paine, Tom, 27
Palmer, Samuel, 57, 66, 68
_Paradise Lost_, Illustrations for, 62
Parker, Robert, 16, 17
Pars, William, 8
“Penance of Jane Shore,” 9
Phillips, Thomas, 49
Piroli, 28
“Pitt guiding Behemoth,” 56
“Poetical Sketches,” 10, 13, 16, 19, 43
“Prophecies of America,” 37
“Proverbs of Hell,” 36
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 57, 59
Richmond, George, 66
Robinson, Crabb, 32, 51, 59, 68-70
Rossetti, Dante, 38
Rossetti, William, 17, 20, 33, 38, 51, 61, 62, 65, 70, 76, 77
Ryland, William, 8
“Samson,” 31
“Satan calling up his Legions,” 56
Schiavonetti, 49, 51
Shields, Frederick, 29, 76
“Simple, David”, 16
Smetham, 77
Smith, J. T., 16
“Songs of Experience,” 15, 20, 21, 23-25, 27, 35, 76, 77
“Songs of Innocence,” 15, 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 35, 43, 76, 77
Stothard, Thomas, 16, 17, 51, 54, 59
Strange, J. C., 62
Swinburne, A. C., 30, 47, 56, 76
Tatham, 70, 71, 72
“Thel, The Book of”, 29, 31, 33, 36, 40, 47
Thomson, James, 77
Thornton, Dr., 65
“Tiriel,” 30
“Urizen,” 29, 43
“Vala,” 29, 77
Varley, John, 56, 60
“Vision of the Daughters of Albion,” 29, 37
Whitman, Walt, 31
Wilkinson, J. Garth, 76
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 27
Woollett, 54
Young’s _Night Thoughts_, Illustrations to, 29